The Heart of Human Interaction
by Constant Comment Tea
Summary: Now they'd done it. The Powers That Be were usually pretty good about foreseeing these kinds of events. And they foresaw this one: it was just a tad too late.
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer:** Judith Cole, William Cole, and Calder Lauchley are my characters. I don't make money off of them, but they're still my creation. Please don't use them without permission. The other main characters and inspiration for this story belong to Mutant Enemy.

**Rating:** For some language and violence.

**Pairing:** A/C friendship and A/OCs friendship. The A/C friendship is based on the fact that they once had romantic feelings for each other, so it verges on a true A/C pairing, but I really don't think that anything shippy (or not) that happens (or not) in this piece will ruin the story for anyone, regardless of shipping preference. This is not a shipping fic (by most people's standards).

**Author's Notes:** Here it is (finally): the next installment of my _Interaction_ series! Though this is technically the third piece in the series, I don't think you _need_ to read the other two to understand this story. It would certainly help to read _The_ _Art of Human Interaction_ and _The Art of Vampire Interaction_ because they explore how Angel met and became friends with William, Calder, and Judith, but this story does not significantly build on anything that happened, plot-wise, in the first two.

_The Art of Vampire Interaction_ is only four chapters long, and takes place just a few months before this story, so if you want to get a quick idea of this world, I recommend reading that one.

Finally, this is complete, and I will be posting new chapters every week or so.

**Context: **For those of you who haven't read the other two stories, this takes place about 200 years in the future in Galway, Ireland, where Angel is living alone. Two young boys, William and Calder, wormed their way into Angel's life and now, 8 years later, Angel (reluctantly) considers them friends and is an unintentional mentor to them. He is also more recently friends with William's mother Judith, who, as an amateur historian, finds Angel fascinating and, as a mother, finds him somewhat threatening. There is no romantic attraction between them.

**Dedication:** To Babblefest, who reads even the worst of my writing, who keeps me from _posting_ the worst of my writing, and who has kept me sane and focused throughout all the hardships and trials of writing decent plots and keeping the characters in-character. You have helped me work through more tangled writing messes than you know (yes, that is possible, and it's true), and my stories wouldn't be half of what they are now without your unending inspiration and patience. You completely deserve (and are receiving) partial credit for this work. I love you so much!

**Credit: **Photo credit for the cover art goes to the supremely talented Ashes at Midnight (who can be found here: u/1815866/ashes-at-midnight). Thank you so much, dear!

**For the Whovians:** If you enjoy my _Angel_ stories and are a _Doctor Who_ fan, you might like the series of crossovers I am co-writing with Babblefest under the pen name, "Constant Babble," found here: u/5290355/Constant-Babble.

**Chapter One**

Now they'd done it. The Powers That Be were usually pretty good about foreseeing these kinds of events. And they foresaw this one: it was just a tad too late.

"Good job, Charlie, send _her_, why don't you? Did you forget to check with George before sending a vision again?"

"No, no, it's okay, I can fix it! Look!" Charlie swished his fingers. "See?...Oh…Um. Uh-oh."

"Uh-oh?" George came up behind them and looked over their shoulders. "Uh-oh. Oh man, Charlie, Lucy is _not_ going to be happy. You're going to lose us _two_ Champions this time. That, or we'll lose _her_. Too bad… I hate wasted potential." George clapped Charlie on the shoulder consolingly and walked away.

"Good luck, mate." Jerry said, also clapping Charlie on the shoulder. "She's gonna demote you, she will."

"You can't demote a higher power!" Charlie cried in panic.

"She'll find a way. I can't _believe_ you just did that." Jerry thought a moment. "You know, it's a good thing we decided not to hire that Ultimate Evil in the Lesar dimension. Now the scales can stay balanced. That may be the only thing going for you."

Jerry walked away, too, leaving a crestfallen, horrified Charlie to think of something to tell Lucy when she heard about this.

/

"Oh, crap!"

_Of course_, Cordelia thought, _the Powers couldn't have included __this__ in their vision_.

"That's right," she said loudly and with as much sarcasm as she could muster, "_send_ your loyal Champion into mortal danger without warning! Thanks for the lesson in vigilance, but I think I could have done without it!" Cordy was well aware that talking to an invisible entity made her look quite insane, but as the only other people in the alley were the three vampires eying her neck hungrily, she really didn't care. It had been a while since she'd faced vampires, but it wasn't the sort of thing you forgot how to do.

She swung the bag that she had brought off her shoulder, tossed it aside, and raised her slightly sweaty fists with a trembling first vampire lunged at her and she ducked. Fighting vampires was not usually part of the job requirement; thus, when she'd signed on as an eternal employee, the Powers had not seen fit to equip her with any superpowers beyond a few extra senses. Oh, the Powers were going to get an earful next time she had the chance. If she had the chance.

She kicked one vampire into a pile of metal sheets and slammed another into a hard, concrete wall. Cordy swiveled around to face the third, already breathing heavily. _Concentrate_, she told herself. She grabbed the third vampire as it lunged at her and used its momentum to deflect it into the first one as it was getting up, and they both fell back onto the pile of metal with an explosive _crash_.

Cordy looked wildly around for a piece of wood. The vampire she had thrown into the wall was advancing on her again; one of his fangs was knocked out from the collision. Cordy might have made a quip about dental insurance plans if she hadn't been more concerned about her situation. She kicked the vampire in the gut with all her might, grateful that she'd at least worn slight heels. It cried out in pain, and Cordy felt a short-lived rush of satisfaction before one of the other vampires grabbed her from behind around her waist and shoulders. Somewhere behind her, Cordy heard footsteps, and she actually prayed to the Powers that it wasn't more vampires-or worse. She elbowed the one that had grabbed her and shoved it away, then spun around.

"Here!" One of two figures racing through the darkness toward her tossed something and she caught it. It was a stake. For the first time in Cordelia's very long life, the PTB had actually answered a prayer. Thanks might even be in order. Later.

Cordy thrust the stake back into the heart of the other vampire behind her. The two figures were fighting the larger of the remaining two vampires, so she focused on the last one. Within seconds, both vampires fell to the ground in cascades of dust.

As the air cleared, Cordelia turned to the other two and squinted in the dusty darkness. They were tall-ish and masculine in that bulky, graceless, yet composed in strength kind of way. They stepped toward her through the settling air and Cordy saw that they were boys. Well, teenagers; they couldn't be older than 16 or so. One had dark hair, the other a lighter sandy-colored hair. The air cleared a bit more and in the dim light, Cordelia recognized them; she breathed a sigh of relief.

"Oh thank goodness," she said. "You two are in danger."

"Danger?" they asked in unison, glancing at each other in confusion. Granted, it wasn't a typical salutation, but Cordy always did like the direct route when she could take it.

"Yeah. But don't worry, I handle this kind of thing all the time. I'm a seasoned professional."

"Okay…" the darker-haired one said slowly. He was leaner and slightly taller than the other boy, and had a self-composure that the other one lacked-actually, that most teenage boys lacked. Cordy wondered what his deal was. "So what are we in danger from?"

"A very good question," Cordy replied. "And as soon as I know the answer, I will be sure to tell you."

"You don't know?" the sandy-haired one asked. He crossed his arms over his chest. "I thought you were a professional?"

"I am." She held out her hand and smiled. "Cordelia Chase. Nice to meet you."

The dark-haired one got over his hesitation first and took her hand. "William Cole."

Cordy nodded to him, the turned to the other, her hand still outstretched. He took it reluctantly and said, "Calder."

"Just Calder?"

"For now."

Cordy shrugged and dropped his hand, "Fair enough." She held the stake in her other hand out to William, who shook his head.

"Keep it," he said. "We've got plenty."

Cordelia thanked him and slipped the stake in one of the pockets of her pants. These were certainly not the kind of earth clothes she was used to, but then, quite a long time had passed since she was last there. The PTB always provided time-and-culture-appropriate clothes before she left on missions to help ease her way into new societies (when necessary, they'd even give her a temporary new body). The pants they'd given her today were loose and comfortable. She could not identify the fabric, but it felt _good_. Light and flowy, but having that necessary weight to hang off the curves of her body just right. She would have to get some to bring home before she left. Her sleeveless shirt was form-fitting, though it allowed for movement nicely, and it was simply, yet tastefully decorated. She also noted with satisfaction that it was appropriately low-cut. After one too many shirts that threatened to choke her, she'd filed a complaint with the PTB on her dimension-jump wardrobe (literally _filed_ a complaint; the amount of paperwork they made her go through was ridiculous). It took a while, but she figured that if she was going to be young and beautiful forever, she might as well flaunt it a bit. Of course, V-necks did much more for her than scoop, but she would look this gift horse in the mouth later. If only they had added a necklace…

She glanced up and realized that the boys were watching her with raised eyebrows as she inspected her clothes. She gave an awkward smile and a slight chuckle. _Way to inspire life-saving confidence, Cordy_.

"So," Calder said, "we're going to need some explanation. We might know about demons, but sometimes people really are just crazy." He flicked a stray lock of hair out of his eyes, which was styled in a swooshed back, that's-right-I'm-a-vampire-fighting-badass kind of way, and the lock somehow settled perfectly back into place with the motion. Cordy was definitely going to have to ask what kind of product he used.

"You got it, Champ," Cordelia nodded. "But first, and this is going to sound like a really weird question, but where and _when_ am I?"

The boys stared at her.

"I swear, I'm not crazy. I dimension-hop, if that means anything to you. I'm not local-well, not anymore. Care to clue me in?"

"Ireland," William said. "2214."

_Ireland_. She thought the accent sounded a bit like Doyle's. And the 23rd century…So only two hundred years had passed since she left. Sometimes, Cordelia thought that keeping track of time was the hardest part of her job. She had long ago decided that if it weren't for the day off and few tokens of appreciation from friends on her birthday, it wouldn't be worth it anymore to figure out how old she was.

"Okay," she said, "that definitely helps. Thanks. So I'll explain, but do you think we could go while we talk?"

"Sure…" William said uncertainly. "Go where?"

"Your place?" Cordelia shrugged, turning to grab her bag. "I'm looking for anything weird or out of place or, you know, anything that might want to kill you." Cordy wasn't usually this blunt with her mission-ees, but given their introduction, she thought they could handle it. She slung her bag over her shoulder as she rejoined the boys.

"That happens a lot," Calder said. "We patrol almost every night. We always find things that want to kill us; it's not hard."

"Yeah, but I have special magic powers that I bet you don't. Whatever it is, it's beyond what you can handle right now, or the PTB wouldn't have sent me." She started walking out of the alley, trusting that they would follow, and they did.

"The PTB?" William asked at the same time as Calder said, "Magic powers?"

"Yes and yes," Cordy answered and took a moment to gawk at the city when they emerged from the alley. Cars glided along the street in front of them in a relaxed creek-like flow. She looked up and her jaw dropped. The walkways connecting the buildings branched over them in a maze of glass and steel, and the underside of the walkways emitted a blue-ish glow to safely light the people below. It was like a strangely ethereal chrome forest. Cordy looked past the walkways to the sky and wondered if interplanetary travel was a reality yet.

"I get visions from the PTB-Powers That Be—you know who they are?" she continued, pointing questioningly to the right, down the street.

William nodded and led them to their right. "We've heard of them," he replied with a surprising note of suspicion in his voice. Cordelia glanced at him out of the corner of her eye: his light green eyes were dark with wariness. This was definitely a topic to return to later.

Cordy drew in a breath."They send me to different dimensions to help people."

Calder swung around behind William and Cordy so that he could walk on Cordy's other side, eying her for the first time with more interest than suspicion. "What kind of visions?"

Cordy gave a half shrug and said, "Lots of different kinds. They're all about people in trouble, though, so I help them."

"Cool," William said thoughtfully.

"And your last vision was of us?" Calder asked.

"Boy howdy," Cordy replied. The boys looked at her as if she'd just spoken gobbledegook (which, incidentally, she actually could speak). "Yes," she clarified.

"What exactly about us?" Calder pressed.

Cordy half-shrugged again. "Just that you're in danger and I have to stop whatever it is from doing whatever it wants to do to you. I did get a sense, though, that it has to do with vengeance of some sort. You guys didn't seriously piss anything off recently, did you?"

"Probably," Calder said. "We kill a lot of things in this town."

Cordy nodded thoughtfully. Broad initial list of suspects. She'd dealt with worse.

"So tell us about your magic powers," Calder said.

"I'll do better than that: I'll show you," Cordy smiled.

Calder and William grinned back.

William's apartment building wasn't far away and they arrived within a few minutes. Cordelia warned them that her magic powers looked boring to an outsider, and they would just have to believe her when she said they were cool. And they were, actually, pretty cool. They were less magic powers than they were extra senses: mostly super-enhancements of her own natural-born talents of picking out the popular and the losers in a crowd.

No, really. Sensing power and weakness, seeing through masks, picking up on intentions: all crucial in deciding who was an enemy and who was a friend. When Cordelia looked at William's apartment building and the surrounding area, she could tell by the quality of the energy that the dwellings emitted where the fighting neighbors lived and where the couple who took in foster kids lived. The first one looked like a swamp: deep and murky, and her eyes couldn't focus properly on it. The second looked chaotic and sharp on the surface, but smooth and hard as stone underneath. Cordelia pointed to a set of windows on the second floor above them.

"That's where you live," she told William. "That window is the one to your room."

"Yeah," William said, impressed.

Cordelia glanced around. Nothing seemed particularly out of the ordinary. She checked out the alleys on either side of the building. No magical disturbances, no unusual power in the area camping out and waiting for William's return, no flashing neon sign that said _Bad Guys Here_. When she was sure she hadn't missed something in her overview, she went back to where the boys were standing on the sidewalk and suggested they go to wherever Calder lived and check it out.

"Actually," William said, "we've been talking, and we think we know a better way."

"Yeah," Calder agreed. "See, we know this guy who knows everything that goes on in this town. He's kind of like...king, or something, of the underworld. He'd know if there's some big evil something in town that's new."

"Er…" Cordy said, trying to decide how good of an idea it was to announce her presence as a PTB agent to the city's underworld...king? Laying low was generally a good rule of thumb, especially when she wouldn't be in town more than a day or two. Hopefully. Also: these kids were on good terms with underworld royalty? If that didn't put them on _someone's_ blacklist, she didn't know what would.

"He's on the way to Calder's anyway," William added. He checked his clock on a device that looked like a smartphone, only a bit larger and a bit thinner, then pocketed it again. "And he's probably been to the Dragon's Crown by now, so he would have gotten the latest from Marty."

Cordy found herself intrigued in spite of herself. Also, given that the kids knew this guy well enough to guess at his night's schedule, the lead should probably be checked out. "Alright," she agreed, and followed the boys' lead away from William's home.

As they walked, Cordy struck up conversation to gather more information. Every little bit helped. Like the fact that they were, indeed, 16, and had been training to fight vampires and demons for the last three years: not only did they have time to rack up a list of enemies, but they had motivation to start at a young age, which usually meant that there was a need. The scales were perhaps unbalanced in this town, or maybe they had emotional issues that needed catharting-which was a ripe environment for something to happen that would call for revenge. Probably a mixture of both, with William being the oddly stable one (_Possible Champion material?_ she wondered) who replied that patrolling "has its rewards," when she asked if they enjoyed what they did. Calder, on the other hand, had replied, "Hell, yeah!" and Cordy felt fairly confident in the Catharsis Theory, as well.

She also learned that Calder had dabbled in magic once, "but not anymore," in a voice that suggested that he didn't want to talk about it. She didn't press it, but she did add it to her mental notes that he was the more likely one to get the pair into whatever trouble they were about to get into.

A natural lull fell as they passed a sweet-smelling bakery (it pleasantly surprised Cordelia that there were still independent bakeries in this age), which William broke by asking,

"So how do you get from one dimension to another?"

"I open a portal," Cordy replied.

"Is that another one of your magic powers?" Calder asked. They suddenly turned and began ascending the front stairs to a tall building; Cordy glanced up and guessed it was at least 50 stories high. She didn't expect Mr. Underworld-King to live...well...Above-world.

"One of them," Cordy replied distractedly as she adjusted the bag on her shoulder. "So tell me about this king guy. Are we going to have to bow or something?"

The boys laughed as William held the door open for them and Calder led the way over to the lifts.

"No," William said. "He's not really king. The city _is_ his, but not in an edict-ruling sense."

"He's just old and intimidating," Calder said, pressing the call button. "So people give him whatever he wants and tell him whatever he wants."

Cordy raised an eyebrow as they stepped into the lift. "But you're not intimidated?"

"Two," William said in a clear, yet lazy tone, and the lift began to move so silently that Cordy would have thought that it hadn't moved at all if not for the slight change in pressure.

"Nah," Calder waved a hand dismissively, answering Cordy's question. "We've known him since we were kids. It's mostly a face. He's the one who taught us to fight."

"And speak Latin," William added, "and made us study demonology texts."

Calder grunted, as if he were sour about this part of his upbringing. The lift doors opened. Cordy hadn't even realized they'd stopped. William led the way down the hall that they stepped out into.

"He can be kind of grouchy," William added. "Don't take it personally."

Cordy shrugged. "Lots of old people are. I've dealt with worse than grouchy." She paused, taking in the information about Latin and demonology. "He's not a Watcher, is he? Is he British?"

"Nope," William replied, stopping them in front of number 207-the only wooden door on the entire hall, Cordelia noted-and knocking. "He was born in this city, actually."

"So does he have a na-"

The door swung open and Cordy's breath stopped in her throat. William and Calder's underworld-not-king was very old, indeed. One of those should-have-been-dead-centuries-ago types—like her. But he looked just like she remembered.

She found her voice before William could make the introductions.

"Angel?"


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter Two**

Angel couldn't think. Who could blame him, really? The closest friend he'd ever had, who had died centuries ago, was standing on his doorstep, breathing, warm, _alive_. It was wrong. Out of place. So surprisingly unfamiliar.

She was supposed to be in L.A. with Gunn and Wesley and Fred. She was supposed to be sitting in front of an early, bulky computer, searching for demons on an ancient networking database. _Cosmopolitan_, out of print since the mid 22nd century, should be within arm's reach, readily available to flip through while the web pages loaded. Cordy, to his knowledge, had never been to Ireland, and, without a doubt, was _not supposed to be in the 23__rd__ century_.

Yet there she stood. She said his name and her voice sounded exactly like he remembered. The smell in the air around her and a few seconds listening to the rhythm of her heart sent his mind whirring past the unfamiliarity and brought the past to the present where, it seemed to Angel, it always had been. Two hundred years was too far away, and so it felt like no time had passed at all. _Of course Cordy's here, where else would she be?_ said one part of him. _Dead,_ said the other. It was too much to take in.

Angel was both grateful and not when Cordy hugged him. He didn't have to talk, he could just hug her back. And while it felt _so good_, there was that unsettling feeling of bringing the past to the present; the line between the two had broken, and it was all the more pronounced now that touch was involved. He tilted his nose closer to her shoulder and took an extra-deep breath. Exactlythe same.

"Angel," Cordy said, pulling away, "are you _smelling _me?" Angel wasn't quite sure how to respond. "It's _me_," she said. "I promise."

"But," Angel protested, relieved that his voice was working. Maybe some answers would stop the spinning. "You _died_."

"WHAT?" William and Calder cried together. Angel and Cordelia both started: they had completely forgotten about the boys.

"Maybe we shouldn't do this here," Cordy said. Angel backed away to let her in, keeping his eyes on her as she moved past. Her scent wafted over him again as she did: she had changed her shampoo. Finally, a difference to prove that time had passed. He had forgotten William and Calder already, nearly closing the door on the latter as he shut it.

"So," Cordy said, "you see me, you hear me, you've touched me, and you're probably still smelling me…" (_Am not_, thought Angel as he let out a breath.) She shrugged her arms, "What else do you want?"

Angel frowned. "A 'how' would be nice to start. Cordy, we _buried _you. Normally, I'd be thinking 'vampire,' but that's clearly out."

"Clearly. And yeah, my body died. But I didn't. Surely you, of all people, know that—at least in our social circle—nobody who dies _actually_ dies. You, Buffy, Darla, _Spike_…what, I can't join your club?" There was a glint of humor in her eye. That kind she used to get when she pointed out the utter ridiculousness of their lives.

"No, that's not what I meant," Angel said, fully aware that she knew that wasn't what he meant, but feeling obligated to say it anyway. "I mean, if you were alive all this time—and I'm still not sure how that's possible when I saw your actual _dead body_—then…why…?"

"Didn't I tell you?" Cordy finished. "Angel." She gave him that look that meant that he could figure it out if he tried hard enough. "It would have been worse if you had known. I told you, I was going where my body couldn't follow, so it had to die. I couldn't have my Champion jump off his path to find me when I'd just gotten him back on it. You had a job, and so did I. And neither of us could live where the others' path led."

Angel thought about that a moment. "And, your path for the last two hundred years has been…?"

Cordy stared at him a moment. She said quietly, "_Five _hundred for me, actually. Almost."

Angel staggered backward a few steps, only registering William and Calder's excited whispers like he might register a ticking clock in the room-if he still had a working one. "Five hundred?" he repeated.

"Yup." She paused. "Guess that makes me older than you, huh?"

Angel just stared at her, trying to wrap his mind around the impossibility.

"It comes with the dimension-hopping territory. Time passes differently everywhere I go..." When Angel still didn't say anything, Cordy elaborated, "To answer your question, my path since we last saw each other is the same as it was in L.A. I'm a Seer for the Powers That Be—minus the unpleasant boulder-crashing-into-my-skull sensations-only I'm a Seer for all dimensions."

Finally, a familiar sensation came over Angel, though it wasn't pleasant or comforting like familiar sensations should be. A deep, volatile anger had begun to boil at the mention of the Powers That Be, though he held it down while Cordelia spoke.

"Actually, I mostly work elsewhere; I think the last time I was here was in the mid 2100's, and that was just a quick stop." She paused, and still Angel didn't say anything. She gave that little frustrated sigh that she had always given when Angel wasn't speaking enough for her liking, and continued, "Anyway, the whole aging thing was an issue, so the PTB gave me a body that lasts forever, and I still get to help the hopeless." She paused again and seemed to have decided that the time had come to push the words out of Angel. "So what about you?"

Angel scowled, and Cordy interpreted his expression correctly. "You're not a Champion anymore?"

"Not for the Powers That Be." Angel said. "Honestly, I don't know how you can still work for them. After what they did to us?"

"It wasn't them, Angel. Skip was lying-"

"But _you had the visions_!" Angel interrupted, anger spilling over the edge of the inner container he was trying so very hard to keep it in. "They couldn't have clued us in?"

Cordelia held up her hands. "Angel, let's stop okay? It's over and _long_ past. There are far more important things to talk about right now."

Angel narrowed his eyes. He didn't want her to be right. There were things he wanted to say—centuries-old things. But her expression, the one that told him to stop and think about it, made him actually stop and think about it.

No, she was right. Now was not the time. The spinning needed to stop first.

"Like what?" he asked, careful to leave an edge in his voice so she knew the discussion was only postponed.

"_What are we going to do now?_ seems like a good one to start with."

Angel could only stare at her. How was he supposed to know the answer to that with his mind and emotions in such a state?

"Well," said a voice behind Angel, and he started slightly again, "we have to figure out what's going to kill us, right?" Angel turned to look at Calder. The boys' heartbeats now registered in his senses with Cordy's. Cordy gave a small sigh that he was pretty sure only he could hear, and William glanced nervously at Calder for his interruption.

"Yeah," she agreed distractedly. "Yeah, we do." Cordy looked at Angel. "So: heard about any new big bad in town that might have it in for these guys?"

Angel glanced at the boys, frowning, and shook his head, though he'd barely heard the question. He was silent for a moment. There were so many questions he wanted to ask. But they couldn't talk about much more in front of William and Calder. He'd told them next to nothing about his years in southern California-aside from many of the demons he'd fought that served as good adventure tales-and he could almost feel the bombardment of questions that would be coming the next time they were alone with him.

"Aren't you going to ask me about my vision?" Cordy asked coolly.

Angel looked at her. "What was your vision?" he asked.

"Well, since you asked… I saw them," she nodded her head at William and Calder, "and lots of dark, swirly nothingness. I don't know how nothingness can swirl, but it did. And then...poof."

"Poof?" Angel repeated.

"Gone. Extra-nothingness. Then the vision ended."

Calder cleared his throat. "That sounds...bad."

Cordelia look over at him. "Pretty much," she agreed. She looked back at Angel. "There was a revenge-y sense to it, and the power was big but not giant. Keep an ear out for us?"

Angel nodded mutely.

Cordelia nodded once in return. Silence fell for an unbearable second, and then she suddenly said, "I should go."

"Go?" Angel asked.

"It's been a long, _weird_ day for me. I just came from Paltrax and no one there understands you if you don't speak in iambic pentameter, and then I came straight here and- I just need to sleep or something."

"I understand," Angel said, though he'd only been up a few hours and dreaded the idea of waiting until the next day to actually get to talk to her. A deep part of himself was afraid to let her out of his sight so soon-what if she wasn't real?

"Thanks," she said.

Angel nodded curtly.

Cordy paused in a way that Angel took as reluctance, but then she turned to the boys and asked them to take her to a nearby hotel. They opened the door, also hesitantly, and led the way out. Angel watched as Cordy backed out of the door and said, "It's really good to see you again, Angel."

"You, too, Cordy," his voice replied for him.

Cordy gave a half-smile and turned to follow William and Calder, letting her fingers tow the door behind her. In a second he would hear it click.

"Cordy?"

She pushed the door open again and looked back at him. Angel crossed the room, and before he could stop himself, he pulled Cordy in and kissed her. Though she pulled in a sharp breath of surprise, she kissed him back almost immediately.

Her lips had the same pleasantly sweet tang he'd tasted last time, just like the scent of the Cordy he always knew: from Sunnydale to Wolfram and Hart. Her hand slipped around to the back of his neck, somehow both gentle and firm in a balance only she had ever managed to strike.

Angel's mind let go of all his confusion, the spinning sensation fizzling in the complete return to Them. That was where they had ended. The farewell that should have been forever, now could be momentary, and they could move forward, wherever that was.

The past began to distance itself again, and some things, at least, began to fall into place. Cordy was in the 23rd century. He could deal with that. His mind began to clear (something he had never, in all his 450+ years, known kissing to do), and he gently let her go. Cordy drew in a deep, trembling breath. She took several seconds to compose herself.

"Well," she said, "I knew we'd have to get to that issue at some point," she let the breath out, looking up at him. "But I didn't think it would be so soon."

"Sorry," Angel said, "it just seemed…"

"No," Cordy interrupted, "it's good. It's a little less vertigo-y." She looked up at him. "Is that weird?"

Angel grinned slightly. "I know what you mean."

Cordy nodded with a small smile, as out of things to say as Angel. She settled for an, "I'll see you tomorrow," to which Angel nodded, and her hand lingered an extra second on his neck before she slowly turned and walked away.

Angel closed the door before she had gotten very far, more to avoid William and Calder's shocked stares than anything else.

/

William closed the apartment door softly behind him, hardly even aware that he'd made it all the way home. His last memory was leaving Cordelia at the Callaghan—or did he remember parting ways with Calder shortly after that? Vaguely, yes.

"Will? Is that you?"

William jumped back to the present moment.

"Yeah, Mum," he said, and shuffled toward the living room. His mother was sitting in an armchair, the picture of poise and togetherness, as if she expected Family Home photographers to stop by any minute.

"How was your evening?" she asked as he appeared in the doorway. William frowned, not sure how to answer. Judith Cole frowned, too, and William knew he'd have to say something fast to assuage her growing apprehension.

"It was weird," he said finally.

Judith turned off the book she had been reading and set it aside, looking at him with a spark of motherly concern in her eyes. "How so?"

William shrugged. He wasn't really in the talking mood, but he had the feeling that his mother was going to press, and they had agreed before William had started learning how to fight that he was to be upfront about anything that happened while on patrol. It was one of her conditions of letting him learn in the first place.

"It was just…" but he wasn't sure how to put it, so he laid it flat out. "We ran into Angel's old girlfriend who's been supposedly dead for two hundred years."

Judith's jaw dropped slightly.

"Yeah, I know."

"But…how…?"

William shrugged again and plopped down on the couch beside his mother. "Apparently she wasn't actually dead. Well she was, because Angel said they buried her, but she got a new body or something..." And William proceeded to recount the night's events to the rapt attention of his mother.

"Fascinating…" she said when he was done, leaning back into the chair with a thoughtful expression that carried just a hint of envy that she had not been there personally to see it for herself.

"That's not the word I would have picked," William muttered, staring at his hands.

"What word _would_ you pick?"

"Weird!"

Judith chuckled.

"It's not funny! This shouldn't be such a big surprise to me!"

Judith raised her eyebrows. "Shouldn't it? I'm sure it was to Angel and Cordelia."

"No, I mean of course it should be surprising in _that_ way, but…But I didn't even know she existed before this!"

"You didn't?"

"No! Well, I was thinking about it on the way home, and I think I remember hearing her mentioned in a few of Angel's stories that he used to tell us. But clearly she was important to him, so why didn't he ever tell us about her? I mean, I've known Angel for half my life now, and I thought…"

Judith smiled kindly as William trailed off. "You thought you knew him."

William made no indication that she was right, but he knew that it, and the following implication that he was a little hurt, were entirely true.

"Will," Judith leaned forward. "You of all people must know that Angel has never been the most forthcoming person about his personal life. Stories about adventures are one thing, but loves and losses are entirely different. You're like me: we can talk about the things that bother us or things that hurt us. Angel's like Calder: they'd rather keep it to themselves unless they absolutely must say something. Don't take it personally. That's just the way he is."

William sat in silence for a moment, thinking it over. "Cal talks to me sometimes. When he doesn't have to."

Judith gave a small smile. "Well, I didn't say 'never.'"

William nodded.

"Do you want my advice?"

William glanced up.

"Go to sleep. Things will be clearer in the morning."

William nodded again and slowly stood up. He allowed his mother to stand up, too, and kiss his cheek before he meandered down the hall toward his room, not as comforted as he supposed he should have been.


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter Three**

The next day, Cordelia began her day early, despite her restless sleep. The mission was important, though she had a difficult time reminding herself that her mission this time was not Angel, no matter how often it usually was.

Her first priority was to protect these kids from whatever the Powers had sent her to protect them from. This was not as difficult or unusual as it might sound. In fact, a quick trip around Calder's building (which she only just remembered to get directions to before they parted ways the night before) with her spider-senses alert revealed several interesting things.

Cordelia still didn't understand why some places attracted certain kinds of energy, but Calder's entire block was one of those areas. It was the kind of place that no one really left without a lot of struggle. More metaphorically than literally, but there was plenty of literal to go around. Cordelia guessed there were at least half a dozen ghosts in the immediate vicinity.

Cordelia cursed to herself. This was going to take a while. Ghosts tended to be much less talkative than...well, just about anything. Cordelia had methods for dealing with that, but it was going to be awkward knocking on people's doors and asking if she could have a quick séance in their living rooms. Yes, this was going to take a while.

_It's mid-morning_, she reminded herself. _That's like Angel's midnight_.

Cordelia explored the block again, weaving through the alleys until she found one of the hotspots. It had an old feel to it, like whatever had happened to this ghost happened in a building destroyed before whatever was destroyed before the crumbling alley was newly-paved over it. The thought occurred to Cordelia that it could have been one of Angelus' early victims, and then she suddenly wished she hadn't had that thought. Sitting down carefully on the grimy ground, she closed her eyes and stretched out her senses, testing for the source of whatever was stuck there, and feeling for any jagged edges of anger, rough edges of grief, or cold edges of fear that might be a motivating factor in whatever event was soon going to happen with Calder and William.

Nothing.

Well, not nothing. More like paths that looked promising on first glance, but quickly curved away into dead ends.

Cordelia tried the process again at the other two hotspots she managed to get close enough to via the fire escape, but by the time she found the last one, she was so focused on not thinking about Angel, she could barely focus on reaching out to the entity on the other side of the wall at all.

Cordelia cursed to herself again and carefully climbed down the ladder, dropping the last several feet to the ground and deciding to go for an early lunch.

She found a cafe that looked promising and sat on the patio in the sun, staring off into nothing until the waiter roused her. She handed him the menu without looking at it and told him to bring her his favorite special, then let herself get lost in her thoughts again, hoping they would wear out enough for her to continue searching for answers that afternoon.

They did not.

William and Calder were her job, but Angel was her family. Family that she had a confusing relationship with, to say the least, and with whom there was unresolved...stuff. Cordy hated unresolved stuff. If left alone, it settled in and got harder to dislodge the longer time passed. Maybe that was how certain areas like Calder's block trapped certain kind of energy: no one ever dealt with it.

After lunch, Cordelia found herself knocking on Angel's door, hoping he was up by then, but guessing he had barely slept at all, like her. The door opened.

"Hey," she said, and, feeling like it was the thing to do, hugged him again. If she knew nothing else, at least she knew how much she had missed his friendship. That particular thought slid into place and she relaxed for having figure that much out, at least.

"Hey," he replied softly in her ear.

"How are you?" she asked.

"Alright," he said as she pulled away.

Cordelia smiled understandingly and moved inside so Angel could close the door behind her. "Me, too." In conscious avoidance of the inevitable conversation and flipping as best she could into casual-relaxed mode, Cordy took in the apartment in all its wooden glory more fully than she had the night before.

"Well, I like what you've done with the place," she said. "But it's a bit morbid, considering your condition, don't you think? What, Pier One was out of matching crosses and holy water fountains?"

"There are lots of forest protection acts in place now," Angel explained, looking around at all his wood furniture, "so there's not much wood around anymore. You can get it, it's just expensive. Most people use a synthetic wood that looks just like the real thing, but I miss the smell."

She smiled. "Always old-fashioned."

"I just like what I'm used to."

Cordy nodded. "I get that…now." Angel looked at her. "I still wear jeans around the house, even though they're not as comfortable as the wrap-pants that have been the style in Cairmir for the past 100 years—they're not big on the fashion scene there."

"Cairmir?"

"The dimension I live in. The Powers set up flats for a few of us dimension-hoppers there. It's nice. Kind of like earth, only the sky is purple. And, like I said, no fashion sense. I've tried to teach the locals a thing or two, but it's a lost cause."

Angel nodded. Cordy nodded. The air thickened again in lieu of conversation to cut the tension away. They both tried and failed to find something else to start a conversation with. Not that there wasn't plenty to talk about; just that it all seemed a bit pointless until they cleared the air for good. Cordy breathed in extra deeply, hoping that the air would help sooth her. The placed smelled like Angel. Her nose may not be as honed as his, but he still smelled familiar and solid. It was _Angel_, Cordy reminded herself. She could talk to Angel.

"Well…" she said. It was a start. "I guess we should talk…about…" she gestured unnecessarily with her hands.

"Yeah," he agreed.

"About how we kissed, and—"

"I kissed you," Angel corrected. Cordy considered letting that slide, but the truth was, no matter who started it, it was definitely not one-sided.

"_We_ kissed." She couldn't read his expression (which was a little alarming), but he gave one nod of acknowledgement so she could continue. "And…"

She stopped.

"And…" Angel prompted.

Cordy wasn't quite sure what came next. She had expected her momentum to carry her through, but Angel had interrupted that. She tried to find it again. "And that's all fine and dandy…It probably had to be done…" Cordy inwardly grimaced. She was making it sound like a chore. "Because, you know, that's where we left off and all, but it's been 500...or 200...well, _centuries _since then: I mean, _I_ moved on, and I know you did, too, because neither of us are _that_ pathetic. We built new lives and maybe had significant others, so—"

"—Do you?" Angel asked, suddenly looking up at her.

"Do I what?"

Angel shifted uncomfortably, asking her through body language to understand what he meant. "Have…a significant other?"

"No. But if I did, would it matter? That's what I'm saying Angel, we're not in love anymore, right?"

"…Right." Angel agreed, looking about as certain as she was. It was true, though. She hadn't lived the past 500 years in deep depression over the loss of Angel, or the rest of her family. She'd moved on. It was just that the shock was still throwing her off. "Right. So that's where we stand."

Angel frowned. "Um. Where is that?...Exactly?"

Cordy sighed in frustration. "I don't know, Angel okay?"

Angel stepped back in surrender. "Okay," he said. "Sorry. You just said it so confidently, I thought I missed something…"

"I think we're _both_ missing something," she sighed again and rubbed her forehead. Angel shifted his weight.

"Well," Angel started. "Okay, so, we're friends, right?"

Cordelia raised an eyebrow at him. "Yeah…"

"Can't we just…work from that?"

"You lost me."

Angel sighed and tried to gesture his meaning. "You and me, we're…friends. So…let's just be friends, like normal, and anything else we can just figure out…you know." Angel shrugged, "…Later."

Cordy put a hand on her hip. "You _know_ that's not going to fix anything."

Angel glanced at her guiltily. "Yeah."

"We're just putting off the inevitable."

"Yeah."

"And this is probably going to create a whole set of problems later that will make us wish that we had dealt with this now like adults."

Angel looked at her with a shadow of a smile. "Most likely."

"Okay, I was just checking." Cordy nodded decisively. "Awkward conversation postponed."

Angel nodded also. "Good."

They shared an embarrassed smile and fell silent. Angel shifted his weight from one foot to the other and back again. Cordy's hands grasped at each other, wringing the tension out. They both glanced around the apartment, searching for an object of conversation, which, in their desperation, failed to appear.

Angel finally asked if Cordy wanted something to eat, to which she said she did, even though she wasn't all that hungry and even though she really should get back to her job. _You know,_ she told herself, _the reason you're here at all… _But they moved into the kitchen and she didn't give herself another chance to logic herself away. The conversation gained momentum and slid into the more natural ease they had been used to 200 years ago. Cordelia commented that with all of Angel's old appliances, it looked like he shopped at the history museum, and Angel explained that the appliances weren't _quite_ as old-fashioned as one might expect after two centuries of technological advancement.

"The technology age really was just an age," Angel said with a hint of gratitude. "Not even technology can change the laws of physics. Now they're focusing on scientific advances; curing diseases and such."

After that, Cordelia had asked about how Angel had gotten to know the boys, and then Angel asked with an undertone of iciness that was not lost on Cordelia how it was still being a Seer for the Powers That Be.

"It's great," she replied, choosing to ignore the iciness for now. "I get to help people who need me, I get to travel around, see lots of different places. And the Powers provide for everything I need; even eternal life."

"How do you like it? Eternal life?"

Cordy nodded, "It's good. I mean, it has its downfalls, but…it lets me do what I love, so who am I to complain?" The conversation then slid into contemplative silence for several moments while Angel served her scrambled eggs. Finally, Cordy asked about the people they'd both known and loved when they lived in southern California.

"You probably don't want to know," Angel said after a moment. "It's a long story, and it doesn't end happily—for anyone."

Cordelia knew that, however much she'd tried to tell herself that it was possible that the rest of them had lived long, happy lives after she'd left. But with their track record?

"Of course I want to know, Angel. I have to know what happened to the rest of my family."

Angel looked up and stared at her a moment. He sighed, then began speaking.

"Things were okay for a few weeks after you left. Then everything went to hell. Actually, hell came to us…"

/ 

"What do you think is going to happen now?"

Calder looked up from the game he was playing on his Palm. William was looking pensive as he leaned back on the two rear legs of Calder's rickety desk chair with his hands clasped behind his head-a position he sat in so often, he never worried if it was going to break under him, as by now he perhaps should have. Calder shrugged as best he could. He was lying on his unmade bed on his stomach, his arms and shoulders holding the weight of his upper body and in hardly the position to properly shrug.

"What do you mean?" A few blasts emitted from the nearly-invisible speakers in his Palm and he quickly went back to his game.

William shrugged and looked down at his hands, which were absently playing with each other. "Angel and Cordelia. I mean, clearly they were in love, and—"

"Get off it. We don't know that for sure."

"Calder," William looked exasperatedly over at his best friend. "I like you a lot, but I'm sorry: if you died and reappeared 200 years later I would _not_ kiss you like that, even if you were a girl. Whether or not anything actually happened between them, they definitely ended on a more-than-friends note."

Calder frowned and swore offhandedly as he lost his game. Tossing the Palm aside, he rolled onto his back, lacing his fingers behind his head and kicking a stray sock onto the floor. "Okay, so you're probably right. But what's the big deal? So Angel gets a girlfriend." Calder let his own words sink in and his face contorted into a grimace of horror. "Oh, I did _not_ want to think about that…"

"The big deal is that maybe she won't stay with him. Maybe…" William sighed. "Maybe he'll go with her."

"No way. Angel's lived 200 years without her and been just fine. We're his friends and he wouldn't just up and leave us, even though she's the one with the actual job and they apparently have this long history and we're leaving home in a few years, and…he's going to leave with her, isn't he?"

William nodded solemnly. "There's a good chance of it."

"But…" Calder started, but didn't seem to know how to finish.

"It's just a 'what if,'" William tried to soothe them both. "We won't really know until…" William sighed and shrugged his shoulders. "We could ask him."

Calder twisted his head back to look at William and raised an eyebrow. "Sure. Go for it. Let me know how that turns out."

They stared at each other in silence for a moment.

"I guess we'll just wait and see what happens." William conceded. Calder nodded in agreement and turned over and sprawled, disheartened, across his bed, where he was silent for several minutes. Finally, he asked, "Wanna go see what Pete's up to?"

William nodded. "Sure."

Calder pushed himself up, grabbed his Palm from the bed, and in a silence more quiet than usual, they ambled to Calder's bedroom door. Calder reached for the knob, but suddenly William grabbed Calder's elbow.

"Do you hear something?" he whispered.

Calder frowned in concentration, and heard it: Voices, at least three of them, quiet and rhythmic. And coming from the other side of his door. Heart pounding, Calder nodded to the small wooden chest by the closet that Angel had given him to store weapons in. William ran lightly to it, flipped it open, and picked out two long daggers. He deftly tossed one to Calder, handle first, like they always practiced for the cool factor. It didn't seem quite so cool now.

When William returned to his side, Calder reached for the door handle. Something was giggling, breaking the rhythm. Holding up his fingers, Calder counted to three, took a deep breath, and yanked open the door. There was a spark, a flash, and something heavy smacked into Calder, who fell into William, and then everything went white.


	4. Chapter 4

**AN: **Just wanted to take a quick moment to thank you guys for your reviews! I hope life is treating you all fantastically!

**Chapter Four**

Angel and Cordy sat across from each other at Angel's kitchen table in a heavy curtain of silence, like an empty theater after the story had been told, the props put away, the costumes hung back in storage. Neither of them had spoken for several minutes, now that the script was finished.

Cordy finally sat back, her eyes moist. "God…" she said softly, her head reeling. Cordy took a shaky breath and looked up. "And what about you?"

Angel shrugged, not meeting her eyes. "What about me?'

"You know what I mean. If you haven't been working for the Powers these past few centuries, what _have_ you been doing?"

Angel's wooden chair creaked under him as he shifted, leaning back as if away from the question itself. "Reading, traveling. You know, the usual when one has an eternity to kill."

Cordelia frowned. "Clearly, 'the usual' for me is helping the hopeless. It was our mission, Angel, and it still is. Have you honestly turned your back against everything we worked so hard for; everything I _died_ for?"

The curtain fell again on a scene that Angel had known was coming but still hadn't properly prepared for. A drop of water _plopped_ into the pan soaking in the sink as Angel tried several times to say something, but each time fell short.

"I couldn't do it again, Cordy," Angel finally said quietly. "After it was over, I couldn't stand the sight of anyone else I knew, or the thought of teaming up with anyone to do good in a world where goodness doesn't last. I wanted no part in it: I quit working for the Powers, I quit working for anyone. For a while, I didn't even bother saving people who fell directly in my path, partially to show the Powers that I wasn't on their side anymore and partly…" he sighed, "…partly because I just didn't care."

He looked up. Her gaze made him feel like a child who had better give the real reason he'd been called into the principal's office _now_, or he'd be grounded all summer. Angel quickly looked back at his hands as if that would make her expression go away.

"You gave up," Cordelia said through a clenched jaw.

"I didn't give up; I chose the lesser pain."

Cordelia took a deep breath. "And what about now? Two _hundred_ years isn't enough time to get over it? These kids you're friends with are…what? Minions to do your fighting for you so you don't have to feel quite so guilty?"

A flicker of anger flashed in Angel's eyes, but he didn't answer right away. Finally, he straightened up and said, "I'll save people I come across, and do my best to keep the demons here under control. Like I said, the kids kind of forced their way in. They'd always shown interest in learning to battle the forces of evil, so when they were old enough, yeah, I trained them, knowing they would be a better force for good than I ever could or wanted to be."

"I thought you didn't care if good won anymore?"

"I care if good wins," Angel replied. "I just don't care if I'm involved."

Cordy was silent a moment.

"You're mad at me," Angel observed.

Cordelia did not respond right away. "I'm not mad," she began. "I'm really disappointed, and I don't understand it all…But I now see a little too clearly that there is something else we need to talk about."

Angel asked the question with a look.

Cordy answered, "The fact that the Powers are completely a part of my life…and completely _not_ a part of yours."

"That shouldn't change anything."

"It changes _everything_, Angel. I'm still alive because of my involvement with the Powers and you're—"

"—probably still alive because I'm _not_ involved with the Powers."

"It's more than that." Cordy sighed and leaned forward, looking into Angel's eyes to make sure he got the message. "It's about our missions. It's about our beliefs. I'm signed on with the Powers for life. I believe in what I do, and I love it. I'm here on a mission from them and I'm going to complete it. I want your help in this Angel. I want to work with you again. But if you help me, you'll be working for them. And that—for whatever reason—might not be something you can do."

Angel looked down at his hands and gathered his thoughts before speaking. "You have no idea how much I hate the Powers That Be. I've been able to move past what happened at Wolfram and Hart: your death, Wesley's, Fred's…But I can never forgive them for what happened with Connor. They had plenty of opportunities to warn us, and they didn't." He met Cordy's eyes. "They have no excuse."

Cordy swallowed. "Are you sure you're just not looking for someone to blame? For a while Wesley was the one on your death list."

"What if I am? Even if they don't hold all the blame, they get a big part of it."

"Does it really help? Having something to blame?"

"Yeah, it does, actually."

"Angel, it's been two hundred years!" Cordelia stood up abruptly and leaned over the table. "You got over the rest of us, why not Connor? Don't get me wrong," she laid her hand over Angel's to calm the fury that was beginning to brew, "I loved Connor, too, and what you went through with him was every parents' worst nightmare combined, but…you've got to let him go."

Angel didn't speak for a minute. His eyes shifted from Cordy's to their hands on the table. Cordy drew her hand away, and Angel swallowed. He looked back up.

"Connor's still alive, Cordy."

Cordy blinked. "What?"

Angel sighed and swallowed. "I think it has something to do with being the son of two immortals. He's pretty old—really old. He's had Alzheimer's for a long time. He, uh…" Angel cleared his throat, "doesn't remember anything…except for a few fragments from the false memories we had to give him, and I think he has nightmares about Quor'toth. I still go see him every day, though."

Cordy fell back into her chair in disbelief. "He's _here_?"

Angel nodded.

"Angel," Cordy leaned forward. "You _have_ to take me to him."

Angel sighed. "Yeah. Okay."

He hesitated before pushing himself up from the table. Looking up, Angel caught Cordelia's eye briefly before turning to get his coat.

/

Less than half an hour later, Angel pulled the car into the shade of St. Anthony's Retirement Community, out of the path of the late afternoon sun.

"You put him in a home?" Cordy asked, stepping out of the car.

"Had to. He needs constant surveillance and the doctors are right there, just in case. If he stayed with me, I would hardly have been able to leave, even to get blood." Angel led the way toward the front doors.

"How long has he been here?"

"Since I moved here, thirty or so years ago." Angel held the door for her to go through first.

"And the doctors aren't a little bit suspicious that he's still around?"

Angel shook his head. "I told them about us. I figured it was easier than moving him around every few years."

The receptionist smiled and nodded at them as they crossed the lobby. "You're early today, Angel," he said. Indicating Cordelia and swiveling the sign-in screen to face himself, he added, "Does Mr. Connor have another visitor today?"

"Yes," Angel replied. "Cordelia Chase."

"Got it," the receptionist replied with a smile as he entered them into their record of visitors. "He's just eaten, so he should be pretty cheerful," he called as they disappeared down one of the corridors. Neither of them spoke until they reached Connor's room, at which they both hesitated, even though it was open.

"Maybe I should go in first," Angel said. "Since he knows me. I'll let him know you're here."

"What's the point? He doesn't know who I am anyway, right?"

"No, it'll just be less of a surprise."

Cordy nodded and let Angel enter the room without her. She could hear him greet Connor in a quiet tone. An old, gravelly voice answered him, and Cordy felt her already-thudding heart jump. _Connor_. She heard two chairs being dragged across a carpet, and then she heard her name. She took a deep breath and stepped inside.

Rip Van Winkle looked younger than the man with Angel's brow sitting in an armchair in a corner of the small room. Was that _her_ sharp intake of breath? She couldn't feel her body, but it walked her closer to Connor and sat her down the chair next to him.

"Connor," she breathed. "Hi." What else could she say?_ Hello, Connor, you don't remember me, but we have a long and awkward history. How have you been? What's your last two hundred years been like?_

"Hello," Connor said in a slow voice full of effort. He turned to Angel. "She's pretty. Where did you meet her?"

"We go way back," Angel replied, sitting down in the chair next to her. "You know her, Connor."

Connor looked at Cordelia through white eyebrows and shook his head. It astounded her how the body could change so entirely while his eyes, which stared into hers as intensely as Angel's often did, stayed exactly the same. If she stared long enough, the edges of her vision might blur enough for her to replace the wrinkles with smooth, youthful skin, and the thin white hair for a long brown mane that always seemed to cover his beautiful eyes.

"No," he said finally, "I think I'd remember her."

Angel smiled weakly. "There are a lot of things you don't remember, Connor."

Connor narrowed his eyes in scrutiny and gave a small grin. "I still think I'd remember her."

"How did _we_ meet, Connor?" Angel asked.

Connor frowned at him. "What's that got to do with anything?"

Cordy finally spoke, "Because I met you about the same time your—um, Angel met you."

"Well I've known him for a long time," Connor said. "Must have been…what?" He glanced at Angel. "Ten, fifteen years?"

Cordy bit her lip. Angel seemed to be much more used to this than her, because he was able to speak right away.

"I've known you since birth, Connor."

"Is that so?"

Angel nodded. Connor scrutinized him, now. "You're not my son, are you? I always thought we had the same brow."

The corners of Angel's mouth twitched. "No, Connor," he said. "I'm not your son."

/

Angel and Cordelia were silent as they walked out of St. Anthony's back to Angel's car, Angel waiting for Cordy to process until she wanted to say something.

"Do you ever wonder," she finally said as Angel opened the door for her, "if that's what you would have looked like as an old man?"

Angel nodded. "Yeah," he replied.

Cordelia gave a half smile and leaned against the car. "The eyes are different," she said.

"Darla's," Angel nodded. "Or…" but he hesitated.

"Or?" Cordelia prompted.

Angel shifted his weight a bit sheepishly. "My mother's," he said, and Cordy raised her eyebrows slightly. "I can't actually tell where he got them…"

Cordelia gave him a reassuring smile and then slid into the car. Angel closed her door, circled the car, and got into the driver's side. They were quiet again until they had pulled out into the relatively light evening traffic.

"You know, we never really finished our talk," Cordy said suddenly.

Angel's mind had been completely elsewhere. "What?" he said, glancing at her as long as he dared while driving. "Um, Cordy. I thought we were…you know. Not talking about that now."

"Huh? No, Angel, not _that_. I meant the Powers That Be thing."

"Oh," Angel said quietly, and he had the sudden wish to disappear into his seat.

"I get that you don't want to work for the Powers, Angel. Personally, I think you should. You are capable of doing so much good, and I don't think it's worth this vendetta you have against them to not live up to that potential. But I'm not going to push the issue any more than that. I'm only here for a few days, I don't want to spend it arguing, and it's your un-life, so… But whatever you decide, I won't take it personally."

Angel swallowed, not quite sure what to say, so he settled for, "Thanks." Silence fell between them for the next block.

Cordelia leaned her head against the window, watching the sidewalks pass by. After a moment, she said softly, "Are you the reason the Powers had to send me to here in the first place?" Angel glanced at her briefly in surprise. "Because there was no one else to help these kids?"

Angel gripped the steering wheel a bit tighter. "I would have helped them," Angel said. "Before I knew the Powers were involved."

"Oh, well, thank god you know now," Cordelia said bitingly. "You know, before you _accidentally _helped the PTB in your efforts to save two kids who _think_ you're their friend."

"I am," Angel sighed.

Cordy snorted. "I hope to God your definition of friendship went to hell after _we _were friends, Angel, because if we were all so disposable-"

"Stop," Angel cut in tersely. "You know you weren't. If you were, maybe I'd be willing to do this all again."

"All what? Friendship?"

"Yes."

Cordelia rolled her eyes. "Drama queen," she muttered. "I know, Angel: love hurts. But there's a reason we fight for it."

"For others, maybe," Angel agreed. "But for me, Connor's the only one I can afford to fight for."

Cordy sighed and turned back to the window. "What happened to you?" she said so softly, he knew he didn't have to acknowledge it if he chose.

At the next block, Angel asked, "Can I drop you off somewhere?"

Folding her arms across her chest, Cordelia replied, "Know where I can get an Orb of Omok? I could use some help getting past the first few layers of this dimension."

"I used to have one," Angel replied. "But I think I got rid of it." He suddenly changed lanes to make a right at the upcoming intersection instead of a left. "Ferguson's should have one. Tell him you know me and he might give you a discount."

Cordy raised her eyebrows, impressed despite her mood. "Like a good, longstanding customer-type discount?"

Angel swallowed. "More like a scary-customer-type discount."

"Oh. Right," Cordy nodded. "Gotta embrace that loner vampirehood, huh?"

"It has its perks," Angel agreed shortly. He pulled the car over in front of Ferguson's and stopped.

After a short moment, Cordelia abruptly unfolded her arms and opened the car door. "Well, thanks," she said. "I'll be in touch."

"How long do you think you'll be here?"

Cordy glanced back at him and shrugged. "A day or two, maybe. Don't worry, Cha-" she faltered. "Angel. I won't leave without saying goodbye."

They shared a brief look, and then Angel nodded and looked away. Cordelia got out of the car, and Angel drove away almost as soon as the door closed behind her.

/

William and Calder lay painfully on top of each other on something rough and hard, furiously blinking in the darkness that the white light had left them in. Bright orbs rushed by them, roaring like dying machines, the breeze ruffling their hair each time one of them passed.

"What. The _hell_. Happened?" Calder demanded, standing unsteadily as quickly as he could. "Who. The _hell_. Was in my house?!"

William pushed himself up also, a little worse for wear, being the one that Calder had landed on. Massaging his ribs, he looked around frantically. His eyes were slowly growing used to the lack of light and he could vaguely see that the things that sounded like dying machines actually _were_ machines. People passed by William and Calder, staring at them strangely.

"Watch your language, boy," an old man admonished in an American accent as he passed with his white-haired wife, who stared disapprovingly down her nose at Calder. Calder looked like he was about to say something back, but William grabbed his arm.

"Hold off," he advised. "Wait at least until we know where we are until you start cursing at random people, alright?"

Calder glared at William, but kept his mouth shut.

William stared at Calder. Calder stared at William.

"So what do we do, Oh-Most-Level-Headed One?"

"I don't know, I just said we should figure out where we are first! How am I supposed to know how to do that? It's not like we can just ask someone on the street."

"Well at least they speak English," Calder shot back, and he kicked a small empty paper box with what looked like a camel on it into the street to be torn up by the tires of the roaring machines. One of them passed particularly close to the curb and blew something up into William's face.

Sputtering, he ripped the oily, bitter-smelling paper away from his nose. He almost tossed it aside, but the large bold writing caught his eye: "_The Los Angeles Times._" William swallowed and looked at the date: September 29, 1952.

"Oh shit," he said.


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter Five**

Angel kicked at a loose piece of pavement as he exited the street-level door of the garage where he parked his car. Not used to being out at such an early hour as Not Long After Sunset, he hadn't looked before kicking the crumbling chunk, and it hit the shoe of a passing pedestrian, who was almost as surprised as Angel was. He muttered an apology as he walked away, wondering even as he set off if he should postpone his walk until people had gone home. He gave a weighted sigh and a chilly gust of wind carried an unusual amount of bakery scents past his nose. Judith Cole stepped out of the bakery door several meters in front of him and he paused for a moment.

Judith had always reminded Angel of a modern version of a poster upper-class 1950's housewife in the way that she graciously interacted with the people around her like they were guests in her immaculate home. He appreciated the way she dressed as if she were prepared for even the lowliest beggar to turn out to be be royalty in disguise. Though he had gotten to know her better over the years and found her in many ways to be the antithesis of 1950's housewife, he still liked that initial impression she gave; it was soothing.

Judith turned, noticed him, and smiled.

"Angel," she said, and approached him, the door falling out of her fingers and once again shutting away the scents of sugar, flour, chocolate, and yeast.

"Judith," Angel replied. He nodded to her bag. "Tomorrow's breakfast?"

"No, actually. I'm playing cards with a few friends tonight." She glanced at her bag, too, with a smile that carried a hint of youth. "We all have our own guilty pleasure that we must indulge in." She looked up again, "Do you know Marietta Goldberg?"

Angel shook his head. "Should I?"

"She lives only two floors above you." Judith chuckled at Angel's surprise. "I'm not the only Cole to have a friend in this building. Shall we?" She motioned to the entrance with a sweep of her hand and Angel nodded numbly. He almost ran into someone else as he turned and that sealed the postponing-the-walk idea for him. He led the way up the stairs and held the door for her to go in first.

"Thank you," she said, waiting inside for him to draw level with her again. "Let's go up the stairs; I always hate to use the lift if I can help it. So how are you?"

Angel shrugged as they mounted the staircase.

"I suppose that's a silly question, isn't it?" Judith said.

Angel glanced at her. "William told you?"

"He did."

Angel was silent another moment as they climbed the stairs, wondering exactly how much William had told her. Then he quickly realized that, given the nature of Judith and William's relationship, he'd probably told her everything.

"Cordy's not my girlfriend," he said.

"Did I say she was?"

"No," he replied as they rounded the landing, "but that's probably what William told you."

"Well," she said, "from what I hear, all indications point that way." She gave him a sideways smile. "But I know teenage boys well enough to take any conclusion they jump to with a grain of salt." She paused and shifted the pastry bag to her other hand. "Whatever she is to you, I'm sure it must be both wonderful and difficult to see her again. I can only imagine what it would be like if my best friend knocked on my door one night without warning. Next week is the 19th anniversary of her death, you know…"

Angel had only heard a mention of this friend, so he didn't know that the anniversary was so near.

"I wouldn't know what to do," Judith continued. "A lot has changed in 19 years, but I suppose a lot more has changed in 200. Do you know if Cordelia is going to be here long?"

Angel shook his head. "Only a day or so. When her mission here is complete. Then she'll go back."

They stopped at the floor where Angel's apartment was, and Judith turned to face him. "Forever?" she asked, her eyebrows raised.

Angel shrugged. "I don't know. Until the Powers give her another mission here, I guess."

Judith bit her lip, thinking. "Then why on earth aren't you spending every waking minute with her?"

Angel didn't answer right away, surprised into silence.

"If it were me," Judith said. "If it were Evie…I'd want to spend as much time together as possible, if I knew it was limited time."

"It's not that simple," Angel said. "There's a lot of…" He paused, and the front door downstairs opened and closed, locking in the echoing sounds of several female voices and shoes tapping across the marble to the lift. Angel swallowed. "Your friends are here."

Judith checked her watch. "We still have a few minutes, not including the amount of time I can take to be fashionably late. What were you going to say?"

Angel shook his head, "It would take too long."

"So be concise," she said. Then, with a twinkle in her eye, added, "I know you know how."

Angel looked at her, somewhat surprised by the, albeit deserved, jibe. He was about to refuse again, but she cut him off.

"Angel, who else would you say it to, if not me?"

Angel thought for a minute. "No one."

"Would that be better?"

Angel shot her a not-too-unfriendly glare, knowing that she had him cornered between the answer he wanted to give (Yes) and the other, which Cordy had long ago shown him to actually be true. The chatting women's voices rose past them through the wall and stopped two floors above.

"How good are you at solving moral dilemmas?" Angel asked finally.

Judith smiled. "Much better than I used to be."

Angel swallowed. "Okay… If your friend did come back for a few days, but the only way you could be with her meant working for someone who did something unforgivable to you…would you still do it?"

Judith contemplated the question before responding. "I suppose all circumstances are different," she finally replied. "But without any other qualifications, then I think yes, I would."

"Even if…" Angel hesitated, hoping she would take the pause for his searching for an appropriate metaphor, rather than fear that she would realize that it wasn't really a metaphor at all. "Even if they did something to your son?"

"Like what?"

Angel shrugged. "You name it. The worst thing you can imagine. If they did that to him, would you still help them, if you could be with…Evie…just a few days?"

Judith breathed in a slightly trembling breath. "Honestly, I'm not sure. Parental relationships are quite different from friendships. If it was very long ago, which I'm assuming in the 'hypothetical' situation it is, what I would _like_ to say is still yes, because I believe that love should triumph over hate in every case." She paused. "What did the Powers That Be do to you?"

"Nothing directly," Angel replied after a moment. That wasn't entirely true, but it was the easiest thing to say at the moment. "It's more like what they didn't do to stop it, when they so easily could have. And what they did to the people I loved."

"Then I think I would still say yes." She watched him while he considered what to say next. "Is that all?" she asked, clearly knowing that it wasn't all.

"No."

The door downstairs admitted two more female voices, which echoed up the open stairwell.

"They can wait," Judith said.

Angel shifted his weight and sighed. "Not long after Cordy, and all the other people we knew and loved back then, died, in some of the most horrible ways you can imagine, I vowed never to work for the Powers again." He hesitated and shifted his gaze to the floor, not wanting to see her reaction to what he was about to say. "I let a lot of innocent people die just to prove that I meant it." He tried not to listen to the change in her breathing. "So do I let their deaths be in vain?"

Judith took a breath. "How many?"

Angel's stomach clenched around the stones of poisonous lead and guilt that had been gathering weight all afternoon. "Eleven," he said. And then he added, "Two of them were children. They stopped trying after the 3-year old."

Judith breathed in a trembling breath to calm herself. Angel could feel the heat of her anger across the several feet that distanced them.

"Was it worth it?" she asked stonily.

Damn if she hadn't cornered him again. Neither answer would suffice, and they both knew it.

He glanced up carefully. "Would you still spend every waking minute with Evie?" he asked instead.

So absorbed were they that neither of them noticed the growing volume of the two women's voices from downstairs until they rounded the stairs below them at that moment.

"Judy!" one of them cried. Judith and Angel started and glanced down at the approaching women. They were both in athletic attire that bore the name of a nearby yoga center, their hair slightly mussed from the class they must have just come from. The brunette glanced at the bag in Judith's hand. "See, Claire? I _told_ you it was Judy's turn to pick up the pastries."

"Fine," the red-headed one said, rolling her eyes slightly. "So, Judy, who's this?" She nodded her head curiously, and a little teasingly, at Angel. He thought she must be one of the most unperceptive humans he'd ever met if she couldn't sense the anything but romantic, or even friendly, vibe between them at that moment.

"This is Angel," Judith said. "He's a friend of the family."

"Well don't chat too long," the first one said, "or we'll start the first round without you."

"I'm coming," Judith replied. "Angel," she addressed him, her tone indicating that he should look at her, which he did. "If you answer my question, I'll answer yours. We'll be done in a few hours; I'll be back then."

"We don't end until midnight sometimes though, Judy," the dark-haired woman said quietly.

"He'll be up," she replied, and then she turned to climb the stairs, her bemused friends following in her wake.

/

"So the good thing is, we know where we are," William said, hardly bothering to be cheerful at the half-full glass.

"Is there anything else that's good?" Calder asked morosely.

William thought for a moment. "We're not dead? And we only lost one of our daggers instead of both?"

Calder sighed and leaned back against the rough, dirty brick of the closed-down shop they were sitting in front of. "We _will_ be dead soon if we keep sitting here breathing in this poison. Don't they know that gasoline kills you?"

"No," William replied. "Besides, what else have they got? Cars and gasoline are still a new invention here."

Calder grunted, but didn't say anything else. They fell back into watching the crowds pass: the skirted women with neatly curled hair, the men in suits, the laughing teenagers…and more cars than William and Calder had even seen in their entire life. Blindingly bright signs flashed at them around the streets. William stared at one in particular across the street advertising fresh produce. How did they make it that solidly, almost illegally bright?

William almost didn't see him. With a start, he nudged Calder in the chest a little harder than he meant to and jumped up, "Calder, look! It's Angel!"

"What, where?!" Calder jumped up, too, standing on his toes to see the view from William's taller perspective.

"On the other side of the road. He just passed that produce sign, there. Come on!" And he hurried off, Calder close behind, still trying to see Angel through the people and cars without losing William. "He's crossing the street up there, do you see?" William asked excitedly. "Hurry!" They jogged so that they could cross with the crowd before the light turned.

"We need to get to the other side," William muttered as they paralleled Angel's progress down the monstrous street. Up ahead, Angel was finally forced to stop at a light. William jogged faster until they were directly opposite him.

"I still don't see him," Calder said, breathing a little harder than normal.

"There, at the back of the crowd," William pointed out.

"Wh—oh." Calder finally said. "What did he do to his hair?"

"I guess you have to go with the style of the times…No!" The light had turned, and Angel started forward with the rest of the crowd.

"Angel!" William called before he could stop himself. Angel's eyes flashed at them and both William and Calder started. That wasn't Angel. Well, it _was_ Angel, but it wasn't _Angel_. Angel broke the cold, calculating gaze and disappeared into the crowd.

Calder swore quietly under his breath. "Where'd he go?"

William narrowed his eyes. "There," he said, pointing to a lone, dark figure that had broken away from the stream of people and turned into the green and leafy entrance of a building with the sign advertising in the same bright letters as seemingly every other business, _Hyperion Hotel_.

"Oh yeah…" William said slowly.

"What?"

"Angel lives there," William said, pointing to the hotel.

"Kinda figured that," Calder replied. "The light's green!"

"Don't you remember?" William said loudly over the noise of the crowd and cars as they hurried across the street with the swarm of other people. "The stories he used to tell us about the monsters he's fought: There was one living in his hotel, here, in the 1950's!"

Calder frowned in concentration as they stopped to wait at the next crosswalk. "Oh yeah," he said vaguely. "Which story was that? Did it involve yellow slime and a sword and lots of tentacles?"

"No, it's the one with the Paranoia Demon that he killed with the bolt of electricity. But I think it had tentacles, too," William replied. He grinned slightly. Angel hadn't told that story in a long time, but it used to be one of William's favorites. He had always imagined the hotel like a castle that Angel had been made king of after he saved all the people living in it.

"Do you think he killed it already?" Calder asked.

William shrugged. "Doesn't make much of a difference, does it? If he has, it's gone, if he hasn't, it will be soon."

They reached the entrance to the hotel and paused.

"Will?" Calder asked. "How are we supposed to find him in there? Do we even know what floor he's on?"

"Nope."

Calder thought for a moment. "Okay, then. Just checking."

And they strode toward the doors as purposefully as they could, stepping briefly to the side to let an angry looking dark-skinned father usher his well-dressed family quickly out of the hotel. People bustled everywhere across the green marble and red carpet floors, and the smell of the air switched from exhaust to cigarette smoke. Several people hovered around half-filled ashtrays sprinkled across the lobby, reading newspapers or watching something on a tiny black and white screen.

"Seriously, do they have no will to live?" Calder whispered as someone breezed by them, smoke streaming out of his mouth.

"You're one to talk," William said, reminding Calder of his brief smoking habit.

"That was just to be one of the gang," Calder replied. "I never really liked it...Much."

"My mum said they added a whole bunch of extra stuff to the tobacco back then…back now…whatever. To make it even more addicting."

Calder grimaced. "Come on," he said again, and they descended the stairs as nonchalantly as they could toward the reception desk.

A man with a hideously green, short tie (it always baffled William how men never choked on ties) stood near the back wall, lecturing an employee for delivering a meal to the wrong room, and in his stead as receptionist, a gum-chewing bellman with a name tag that read "Frank" waited with a deadly-bored expression on his young face.

"Yeah?" he asked, smacking his gum, when they approached.

"We're looking for someone we think is staying here," Calder said.

"We're not supposed to give out room numbers," Frank replied. "It's a…whatchacallit. Privacy thing."

"Oh, well…" Calder started, but faltered.

"He won't mind, we know him," William said.

"Yeah, uh, what part of 'no can do' don't you two kids understand?" Frank said, "I don't care if he's your _father_. You don't have permission, you don't have the number."

William sighed in frustration. "Can you give him a message for us, then?"

"Yeah, okay," Frank said, and pulled out a small pad of Hyperion-embossed paper and a pen. William's stomach clenched slightly and he prayed that it was normal to print instead of use cursive. Clutching the pen in his hand, which had been trained in handwriting but was no means proficient, he spelled out Angel's name as cursive-like as he could at the top of the paper. He had barely started the next word when Frank made a startled coughing noise and William glanced up into the bellman's suddenly pale face.

Frank had to swallow his gum to get it out of his throat. "You're leaving the message for _him_?"

"Yes," William said.

"You, uh, know him personally, you say?"

"Yes," William repeated.

Frank cleared his throat. "Tell you what, I'll just, uh, _happen_ to write down his room number and leave it where you guys _happen_ to see it, and uh, we'll all be happy."

"Okay…" William replied, sharing a confused glance with Calder as Frank yanked the pen out of his hand, scribbled the number 217 on the paper and turned it around for them to see, glancing around anxiously.

"Okay, that's that, you boys have a nice night," and Frank crumpled the paper up and threw it away. "I'll take care of that for you, folks!" He hurried over to a couple who had just arrived, tossed their bags on a cart, and wheeled it away almost before he got the chance to catch the newcomer's room number.

"Strange…" Calder muttered as they made their way to the stairs.

William nodded in agreement, watching as the lift doors closed on Frank's antsy figure.

When they reached the second floor, they turned down the hallway and began searching for 217. The chatter from downstairs died away almost the instant they turned the corner, and the corridors harbored a quiet that was almost creepy in its absoluteness. The hairs on the back of William's neck prickled.

They passed room 208 when a loud _bang_ and a shout of pain made them both jump. "This way," Calder said, though William was already sprinting alongside him toward the noise. They rounded the corner and stopped dead. Angel was half-dragging a man in a tan suit and hat down the hall by the wrist and ear. The lift door at the other end of the hall opened to a surprised Frank, and Angel ruthlessly shoved the man into Frank's cart with a crash that almost sounded as though some bones had snapped.

"He's going down," Angel said, and when he turned, William drew in a short gasp. Suddenly, he understood why Frank was so furiously pounding the down button on the lift. Angel's eyes were colder and more hateful than any vampire William had ever come across. Most of the vampires William faced were simple, pure evil-this was so much worse.

"Gosh. I mean that was—Gosh …" A woman in a floral dress that William had only just noticed stood nervously outside an open door, her curls bouncing with each fervent motion. "Listen," she said, "I know we got off on the wrong foot. My name is Judy, and—" But her gratitude was cut off by the slam of the door to what William now realized was 217. He glanced sideways at Calder with raised eyebrows.

"…and I'm staying in room 213…if you ever wanted to stop by, have a smoke…" the woman finished quietly. She turned and jumped at the sight of William and Calder. "Oh!" she cried. "I'm sorry, I didn't—This wasn't what…" And instead of finishing, she hurried off to her room, fumbling with the key in her pocket as she passed them. When she had shut and locked the door behind her, William turned to Calder.

"Okay," Calder said. "I can see why he didn't want to deliver the message himself…"

William nodded in agreement. "Maybe we shouldn't bother him right now. I mean, he doesn't actually know us _yet_."

"Maybe," Calder conceded. Then he added hesitantly, "Angel was _good _in the 1950's, wasn't he?"

"Of course," William replied. "He defeated the Paranoia Demon, remember?"

"Then let's just ask him," Calder said, with some amount of resolve. "It shouldn't take too long, right?"

"Right," William agreed. "And it _is_ Angel…"

"Right." Calder led the way to Angel's door and hesitated. "You knock," he said.

"Me? Why me?"

"Because you've known him the longest."

"Hardly."

"Just do it."

"Scared?"

"Not as much as you, apparently."

"Just knock—"

Suddenly, the door flew open almost of its own accord, and both boys jumped. Angel glared at them in irritation.

"Do you mind arguing in front of someone else's room?" he said coldly.

William swallowed. "Angel, we need to talk to you."

"Look, I don't know how you know my name, but stay away from me."

"We're from the future," Calder pressed, "and we need your help getting back there."

"Not interested," Angel replied.

"All we need is your help with a spell or something," Calder said.

"Do it yourself."

"But what if we don't speak the language it's in?"

"Not my problem," Angel said. "Look, I really don't care what your issue is. I don't have a sign on my door that says I help people, so I don't know why everyone keeps coming to me tonight wanting protection or spells to get back to the future, if that's even possible. I just want to be left alone." He started to close the door, but William stuck his foot in the way.

"Have you killed that paranoia demon yet?" he asked quietly.

Angel frowned. "The what? Why would I do a thing like that?"

"Because the Angel we know helps people," William said resolutely.

Angel scrutinized him. "Do you even know what I am?"

"You're a vampire with a soul."

The briefest flash of surprise flickered across Angel's face, but it disappeared almost instantly. "Then you should know that vampires don't mix well with humans. The soul doesn't take away the hunger for human blood. I've got a bottle of it chilling right there," Angel moved enough so they could see the cylinder bucket on the desk, "but it's not hot or fresh like it would be from your throats. Now," he leaned slightly forward and lowered his voice a notch. "If you don't move your foot, I'll crush it."

William swallowed and gingerly removed his foot from Angel's door. Seconds later, it closed with a soft snap.

/

At the end of round three, Judith couldn't take it anymore. She excused herself to use the restroom with the same smile she had used all evening, quietly locked the door, pulled the fluffy yellow hand towel off the rack, and buried her face in it, sinking to the floor as she wept. She could hardly feel the warmth from the heated tile. The room, which she normally appreciated in its warm and tasteful decoration, felt as cold and empty and lonely as a morgue. _The_ morgue, actually, where her memories had been for the past hour. Her heart was at once cold and hot with anger, hard and soft for Angel's situation, and grieving tears she thought were long spent. She thought bitterly of how much she envied him, having the choice that she never would, yet grateful at the same time for not having to make it. Evie's death hadn't been of magic, it had been of stupidity, and there wasn't ever any coming back from that.

She let the worst of the emotions spill out into the towel before deciding that almost too much time had passed. She stood, replaced the towel, spruced up her make-up, and flushed the toilet, just in case anyone noticed. As the water swirled away, she pretended that her emotions went with it, and added a small smile as the finishing touch to her usual ensemble, left to join the start of Round Four.

They ended mercifully early that night, because of Marietta's appointment with a client the next morning. Judith appreciated the distraction her friends offered, and the consolation they gave when she attributed her less-than-usual cheer to the upcoming anniversary of Evie's death, but the social exhaustion took hold early, and she sighed in relief when she finally descended the quiet stairs alone. When Angel opened the door, she found an unexpected comfort in the sullen atmosphere in his apartment, where she wouldn't have to mask herself so much. Judith stepped in without saying anything, and heard the door click behind her. Wrapping her arms gently around herself, she turned to face him.

"Do you have an answer for me?" she asked, stemming any greetings that would normally be obligatory, but right now seemed wholly irrelevant.

"Was letting people die worth the Powers giving up on me?" Angel said. He seemed to be trying to force himself to look at her, and didn't answer until he could. "Of course it wasn't worth it… But I wouldn't have done it differently."

Judith's eyes narrowed. "If you had known that you would be facing this choice, that in the end their deaths might not have meant anything, would you still have done it?"

Angel swallowed and thought about his answer. "Almost everyone I _ever_ thought of as family died within months of each other. It wasn't directly the Powers' responsibility, but they could have warned us, guided us through it. At that point in my life, it wasn't just that I wanted the Powers to lose one of their most valuable Champions—I wanted to stop caring so much about creatures that will someday die anyway."

Judith let the air fall silent before she asked again, almost in a whisper. "Was it worth it?"

"At the time," Angel swallowed. "Yes."

Judith nodded, satisfied not in the answer itself, but in his honesty. "And my answer is no. It's not alright to let their deaths be in vain. You should be willing to die for your own convictions, not make someone else die for you."

Judith pulled her crossed arms in tighter against herself and pushed past Angel for the door, needing to make her escape route quick and easy. She pulled the door open and stopped.

"But that wasn't your question," she said, turning her body halfway to face him, "Your question was, 'If it were Evie…' If it were Evie, would I ignore the deaths of eleven people, who unwillingly and unknowingly gave up their lives for a vendetta, in favor of my own happiness?" She took a deep, trembling breath and looked at him. "Yes. And God help me, I would love every minute of it." Judith shut the door gently behind her in as dignified a way as her trembling hands would allow.


	6. Chapter 6

**Chapter Six**

Angel couldn't even pretend to sleep that night. He sat in the dark sanctuary of his wooden apartment that seemed to soak up all excess noise and leave the space vibrating in silence. Somehow, the absence of other sounds made room for the clamoring thoughts in his head, allowed them to leak out where he could better see and make sense of them.

It had only just struck him that he had nothing of William or Calder's in his apartment. A lingering scent perhaps, and some food in the kitchen, but it would be so easy to pretend that they never existed, and so impossible for any outsider to know about the two kids whose company he had unintentionally grown to appreciate over the past several years. Had he really thought that that would keep them safely enough at bay? Hadn't he already doomed them by letting them learn to fight? A part of him thought that they still had hope, and it was a part he wasn't quite ready to let go of. If there was any way out of the spiraling path they were on, he wanted to make sure they took it.

In the deepness of the silence, the electronic beep of the phone startled Angel like a light bulb to bare, night-adjusted eyes. Cursing silently under his breath and taking a few seconds to let his body dilute the adrenaline, he pulled his Palm out of his pocket and managed to answer the video call without accidentally hanging up first.

"Angel," Judith said in a harried voice, her throat husky and eyes wide and bloodshot with exhaustion. Their conversation only a few hours ago seemed forgotten in her hurry to speak to him. "Angel, William is missing."

Angel frowned. "What?"

"He's _missing_. Calder, too. I've talked to his parents and their friends' parents. No one has seen them."

"Are you sure they're not out patrolling?"

"If they did go, _without telling me_, they should have been back hours ago. Will has a doctor's appointment first thing in the morning; he promised he would be home early tonight. You know he's a good kid, Angel. If his plans changed, he would have told me."

Angel glanced at the clock. 2:45am. Time had passed faster than he thought, and now he had to make a quick decision on a matter that should not be decided quickly at all. Angel tapped his finger on the back of the Palm, behind Judith's anxious, expectant face.

"Where were they last?" Angel asked.

"Calder's home, as far as I know."

Preliminary inspection would be alright, he decided. Just so long as he tread carefully and caught himself if he slipped down that slope. "I'll go and check it out," Angel said. "See if I can track them."

"I'll meet you there," Judith replied.

/

"So…" Calder said as he and William slowly made their way back down the stairs to the bustling Hyperion lobby. Frank was back behind the counter, staring so hard at his magazine that it looked more like he was trying to disappear into it than actually read it, and jumping at the slightest noises near him. "What now?"

William shrugged. "I guess we need a place to stay," he said. "It being night and all."

"Any ideas?"

"Short of sleeping outside because we have no money, you mean?"

"Yeah. We'd never get any sleep by the road—I can hear the traffic all the way in _here_!"

William sighed. "I don't know, Cal… I'm tired and I have no idea what's going on, or why we're here. Who were those people in your house, and why would they send us back to 1952 Los Angeles?" He sat down heavily at the foot of the stairs. On the other side of the railing a fuzzy voice emitted from the speaker of the television, asking a captured man if he was now or had ever been a member of the Communist party. One of the people standing around the set commented in a husky voice that the person most certainly _was_ a Communist, because he just had "that look." Calder sat down beside William and rested his forehead against his hands.

Calder added, "And what's gotten Angel in such a bad mood? You don't suppose the Paranoia Demon is affecting him, do you?"

William nodded. "Yeah, I bet it is." He sighed. At least, he _hoped_ it was.

"Hey, hey, hey," a nasal voice said, and they looked up. Frank was hurrying over to them, a new piece of gum soft in his mouth. "No loitering! You delivered your message, yeah? Come on," he nodded toward the door. "Time to…whatchacallit. Skidaddle. Run along home."

Without any other apparent options, William and Calder pushed themselves up and allowed Frank to shoo them toward the door. They passed another crowd of incoming guests on their way out, which diverted Frank's attention, so no sooner were William and Calder outside than they sat back down on the steps leading up to the entrance, though as off to the side as they could manage.

"Well?" Calder said after several minutes.

William shrugged. After several more minutes, he said, "You don't think they'd give us a room if we told them we know Angel, do you?"

Calder glanced sideways at William. "Why would they?"

William shrugged again. "Angel intimidates that one guy…"

"Well, the guy sure doesn't have any spine, but if I were him, I wouldn't do it without proof from Angel himself. And I don't think he's in the mood to come downstairs…"

They fell into silence again, leaning away from the door automatically as people came and went. Calder took to watching the flow at first in an unconscious way, and then with a bit more interest.

"A lot of people go in and out of this place," Calder said softly.

"Yeah?"

Calder shrugged. "They can't be watching the door the whole time, that's all."

"You think we should go back in? And do what? Loiter until we're noticed again?"

"Or hide…" Calder glanced at William. "We could steal a key."

William stared at Calder in part incredulity and part consideration. "That's...mad. And brilliant. And _wrong_. My mother-"

"-isn't here," Calder interrupted. "And even if she was, she wouldn't have any better ideas, either. Way I see it, it's this or make friends at the nearest hobo camp."

William glared at Calder, though not entirely unfriendly. "Alright, I'll hear out your plan. How do we steal a key?"

Calder turned back toward the door in thought, though he couldn't see through the frosted glass. After a moment, he shrugged. "Wait until no one's behind the front desk and grab one?"

William rolled his eyes. "Right. Because it's common practice to leave the front desk unmanned."

"A diversion," Calder whirled around to face William. "There are always diversions in the movies."

"This is real life," William reminded him.

"Doesn't mean diversions don't work. Here, can we still send messages between Palms?" Calder pulled his device out of his pocket as William reluctantly dug out his.

"We should," William said, watching his screen while Calder composed a test message. "They're connected to each other, not a satellite…" Not two seconds later, William's Palm beeped with Calder's message.

"Perfect," Calder said. "Okay, here's what we'll do…"

/

Fifteen minutes after Judith had called, Angel stood with her in the doorway to Calder's room, having been let in by a robe-clad, sleepy-eyed, yet slightly frantic Mrs. Lauchley.

"I just don't know where he might have run off to," she was saying. "He's usually a good boy. Quiet. Nice. Not a lot of trouble from him. Oh, when his father gets home..."

Angel raised an eyebrow in her direction, but he didn't say anything.

"Did you call the Gilberts?" Mrs. Lauchley asked Judith suddenly.

Judith face both lightened and fell at the realization. "No," she breathed. "I forgot. Would you…?"

Mrs. Lauchley nodded and hurried off.

"So?" Judith asked as soon as it was safe, and followed Angel into the room.

"They were definitely here," Angel replied, "but no less than ten hours ago."

"Ten hours…?" Judith repeated faintly.

Angel walked around the room, glancing at the askew desk chair and the unmade bed-not unusual considering it was Calder's room, but Angel was interested in the faint scents hovering around the objects. He suddenly glanced at the doorway. "There were others, though." He heard Judith's heart skip a beat.

"Others?"

He nodded. "Three of them. Their scent is strongest by the door, but they came in here. Not for long, though."

"They boys have several mutual friends they're often with," Judith offered. "Perhaps they went out together."

Angel frowned and shook his head. "I don't think so. The boys' scent is too weak in the rest of the apartment. And I didn't sense the other people outside at all. I..." He hesitated, not wanting to alarm Judith much more than she was. But then Angel reminded himself that her son was missing-she could hardly be much more alarmed. And if..._when_...it had been him, he would have wanted to know everything. "Judith..." He looked at her. "They weren't human."

Angel could almost see the cold barbed wire of fear coil up from her gut around her heart; he could almost hear the heart piercing itself against the sharp barbs with every beat. He swallowed, surprised at how clearly he could remember the feeling.

"What are you saying?" Judith demanded.

Angel didn't answer. He just looked at her another moment, and when he finally glanced away, he noticed a glint under Calder's dresser. Angel strode over and bent to have a closer look. It was one of Calder's daggers. Angel turned and narrowed his eyes in the corner of the room where Calder kept his weapons chest. The lid was open. Angel stood and made his way over to it, Judith close behind, and knelt down, taking quick stock of its contents.

"Anything missing?" Judith asked anxiously.

"They took two daggers," Angel replied, holding up the one in his hand. "They knew someone was here."

The air around Judith contracted so strongly that Angel practically felt the pull of it toward her. He wanted both to reach out and comfort her, and draw away lest by his own memories he be pulled in, too. He settled for doing neither.

Judith seemed to be about to say something, but at that moment, Mrs. Lauchley returned. "The Gilberts haven't seen them since Sunday," she said, in her own fear hardly noticing Angel swiftly return the dagger and close the weapon chest as he stood up.

"I have a contact who might know something, Mrs. Lauchley," Angel said. "I'll see if she can help."

Mrs. Lauchley nodded as Angel swept out of the room, closely followed by Judith. "Just so long as you don't charge extra, the more people you bring in," she said. Judith had introduced Angel as a private investigator who happened to be a friend of the family, at which point it struck Angel as how odd it was for this to be his first official meeting with Calder's mother, after eight years of knowing him.

Angel hesitated at the door and turned, trying to mask his incredulity. "He's your _son_, Mrs. Lauchley."

"Yes, I know that," she said. "That's why you better find him!"

Angel stared at her a second, then shook his head. "I don't charge, anyway," he muttered, and they left.

They were silent until they reached the bottom of the stairs outside, where Angel stopped.

"Cordelia is staying at the Hotel Callaghan, room 328," he said. "She won't mind if you wake her up now."

"Excuse me?" Judith said, frowning at Angel and circling to face him. "You're not coming?"

Angel's eyes fell to the ground as he shifted his weight. "This is what Cordy's here to do," he said. "And you know why I can't be a part of that." He glanced up. "You're in good hands with Cordy; she'll know how to find them."

Judith's mouth opened and closed several times around silent words of confusion. Angel turned abruptly and headed off down the street, tapping a button on the cab column by the curb to call a taxi for Judith on his way. A small part of him hoped that the darkness of the night would seep into him and alleviate some of the guilt that was festering. Darkness was good at getting rid of guilt, if you knew how to let it.

A moment later, Judith seemed to have found her words and she called after him, hurrying to catch up. He could so easily slip away from her, if he really wanted to…

She caught hold of his arm in firm grip and pulled him around. "That's it? You're just leaving?"

"What part of 'I can't be a part of this' didn't you understand?"

"Everything!" she cried. "Angel, I know there's a whole complicated, extremely morally questionable—no, morally _wrong_—backstory to this, but we're talking about _William_."

"I know," Angel replied sharply. "I _know _it's William, and that's why I can't. If it were anyone else…"

Releasing her grip on Angel's arm, Judith folded her own hands in front of herself in stern, hardly-controlled patience. In that moment, the clear blue of her eyes reminded Angel strongly of ice over a deep lake. He could almost see the ice becoming thinner with each step he took.

"You cannot gain my trust as a mentor for my son and then break it for some centuries-old vendetta, Angel," Judith said coldly. "There must be more to this 'moral dilemma' of yours than you let on, because, I'm sorry, I just can't believe that you're taking the moral high ground in this case. I can't believe you care that little about William."

A red taxi cab appeared around the corner and stopped by the cab column several meters away, the driver glancing curiously at them. Angel took a slow, deep breath.

"You're right," he said finally. "I don't care that little about William. I care that _much_ about him. The instant the Powers That Be know that, they'll use him to get to me. It'd be different if it were just about Cordy: they already know how much she means to me. But they can't know that about William, or Calder, or even _you_."

Judith bit her lip to stop its trembling; her heart hammered, though the rest of her body managed a statue-like stoicism. Angel shifted his weight again and continued.

"The fact that Cordy's been sent to get them back means that the Powers want them on their side. Helping you is directly helping them and their cause. I can't do that, Judith. It kills me to sit by and do nothing, but I promised to protect your son, and this time, nothing is the best I can do."

Angel turned, and started walking away again. He turned his head so she could hear him as he walked. "Take the cab to the Hotel Callaghan. Room 328," he repeated. Then he slipped into the first alley he could and let the darkness swallow him.


	7. Chapter 7

**Chapter Seven**

Angel was right: Cordelia didn't mind being woken up at close to four in the morning—not when Judith introduced herself and explained her problem, anyway. Cordelia took the news that Angel had decided against involvement in stride, masking her true reaction with practiced ease and switching her focus to the problem at hand. She did not, however, take the news that something had happened to the boys nearly so well.

Judith relayed everything Angel had already deduced on their visit to the Lauchleys, and then Cordelia asked Judith to take her back to Calder's apartment in the morning so she could do her own investigative work and with concern in her eyes, begged Judith to try and get some rest on the extra bed in her hotel room. Judith was hardly able to sleep, but closing her eyes into the pillow helped somewhat anyway. That, along with some forced breakfast at the buffet downstairs a few hours later before they left, gave her enough energy to continue pushing through her fear for the rest of the morning.

"Well?" she asked, once again at Calder's bedroom door, the sun now streaming through the window. Mrs. Lauchley had just left to take breakfast off the stove, and Judith watched Cordelia circle the room as she had watched Angel the night before.

"I think Angel's right," Cordelia said. "They didn't leave this room—not in the normal sense, anyway, of actually walking out." She paused and waited while Calder's younger brother passed by sleepily in the hall, glancing at them with suspicion. "There's a strong trail of magic here." She narrowed her eyes, as though searching for something. "But I think it started…" Her eyes rested on the doorway where Judith was standing anxiously. "Right about where you are."

"This is where Angel said the others were."

"It's not too hard to put two and two together, then," she replied, coming over to stand next to Judith. "I don't think we're going to find them in this city, Judith."

"What do you mean?" The swarm of bees that had taken up permanent residence in Judith's stomach since the night before began to buzz with new vigor.

"I mean, William and Calder aren't in Kansas anymore."

Judith frowned. She understood the reference, but not the implication behind it. "Then where are they?"

"My guess," Cordelia sighed. "Another dimension." Then she swore under her breath in a language that Judith didn't know, but the intonation was clear enough.

Judith paled, and the bees began stinging her already sore stomach.

"Don't worry," Cordelia rested a hand on her shoulder. "I'm a professional with dimensions, remember? I'm going to see what I can figure out about the magic these guys used. But I need you to make sure that they," Cordelia nodded her head down the hall toward the kitchen, "don't come back unexpectedly. Okay?"

Judith knew it was a common technique to assign a job to someone in distress in order to calm them, but she was grateful for it. She nodded, and Cordelia positioned herself cross-legged on the floor, eyes closed. Judith backed away, watching Cordelia anxiously, and guarding the hall to the kitchen with a slight sense of helpful purpose.

A few long minutes later, Cordelia opened her eyes and looked up.

"Well?" Judith asked again in breathless suspense. "Do you know where my son is?"

"No," Cordelia replied. "But I know who sent him there."

/

It wasn't more than 30 minutes, but to William, waiting and watching felt like hours. Hidden in the safety of crowds in the lobby, he moved from one group to another as they formed and dissolved as superficially as foam on the ocean. He did his best to "act like he belonged" as Calder had instructed, but William wasn't much of an actor, even _if _he looked the part (which, dressed as he was, he didn't). That's why he was the one that was going to steal the key.

William was eventually able to snag a chair and a newspaper and effectively hide himself where he could watch the front desk activity. Calder had told him to wait until Frank the bellhop was alone, but between him and the general manager, Frank was the one to more often leave to transport bags, while the manager stayed behind at his desk behind the counter.

It finally happened, though, when the manager stood up and announced something to Frank, who nodded his head and didn't look up from the comic section of the paper. William's heart skipped a beat and then plunged into his twisting stomach. With sweaty fingers, he pulled out his Palm and, careful to conceal it behind the paper, told Calder, _Now_.

Seconds later, Calder came into the lobby from the front door and made a beeline for Frank. Trying to keep his breaths from shaking too much, William scanned the rest of the room, praying that nothing was about to go amiss. He noticed an empty spot on the circular couch in the center of the lobby that was a little closer to the front desk. He shoved his Palm back in his pocket as he stood up and edged over to it.

"No seriously," Calder was saying to an annoyed-looking Frank, "ask him yourself."

As a diversion, Calder was using William's original idea of drawing on their relationship with Angel to get them a room on the off-chance that it worked (but mostly, William suspected, it was so that Calder would have gloating rights if it didn't). William sat down on the couch and peered around his paper.

Frank's glare was far too suspicious for William's liking. "Oh yeah? Where's that's friend of yours? The tall one?"

"Upstairs with Angel right now," Calder replied without missing a beat.

"Hey!"

William jumped at the sharp voice of the man who suddenly stepped between William and his view of the front desk. "I was sitting there, kid."

"Sorry," William practically leapt up from the seat. "Sorry," he said again, and sidled over to one of the columns level with the front counter, burying his face back in the newspaper as quickly as he could. He couldn't see Frank anymore, and if Calder noticed William there, he didn't show it.

"Yeah, right," Frank said. William quickly pulled the newspaper around to block his entire view as Frank came into sight around the opposite column, listening intently as Calder protested and resisted being taken back outside. William peaked around the edge of the newspaper again cautiously. People were watching, now, with mild interest. Calder was doing his best to keep Frank's back toward William, and he knew that this was his chance. He took a deep breath and, newspaper still up, crossed to the end of the counter in a few long strides, double-checked that everyone was still watching Calder, and ducked low behind the counter.

They keys were all there on tiny brass hooks, and William wished he'd thought to consider which one might be the best to take. Higher floor for a smaller chance to run into Frank? Or lower floor for a quicker escape route? A room in the middle of a block of other occupied rooms to hide in a crowd? Or in the middle of an unoccupied block to hide in silence?

The sound of a toilet flushing made William jump again. He cursed under his breath and took a key at random and turned to go back the way he came, crouching to stay below the counter level.

"And stay out this time or I'll call the cops, y'hear?"

William froze as the front door closed. He cursed under his breath again. Frank would have turned around by now.

William spun around and noticed a door to what he assumed was an adjoining office or back room of some sort. It was ajar. Without a second thought, he dropped his newspaper and dashed toward the door, still crouched awkwardly like a running ape, and was through just in time for the bathroom door to swing open and Frank to return to his position by the front desk, stopping to pick up the dropped newspaper and adding it to his own pile.

"What the heck was that all about, Frank?" the manager asked.

William let out a long, trembling sigh as Frank answered dismissively. He looked around in the dimness of the room. It was indeed an office, with the same deep green walls and an important-looking wooden desk opposite him. William wondered briefly if that was the same desk Angel used when he bought the hotel.

"Keep a sharp eye," the manager was saying. "The last thing we need's more mishaps…"

William glanced around the office again and this time noticed the door. "Oh thank God," he breathed, and stood up quietly. He stole across the office to the other door and tried the knob. Locked.

"Damn," William hissed.

He felt around the knob, wondering how on earth locks like these worked. He'd seen them used in movies, of course, but how accurate were those? William looked at the key in his hand and tried to fit it into the keyhole, but with no luck. At least, not without a great deal of scraping and pushing. William eyed the other door nervously, but heard no ominous sounds.

"Think," he whispered to himself.

William inspected the rest of the locking mechanism on the brass panel attached to the door. No amount of pushing, pulling, or twisting on the circular handle itself unlocked the door, even though the actual handle twisted promisingly. There must be a deadbolt in there that the proper key released, William reasoned. He tried the key again, but only the very tip would go in.

"_Alohomora,_" he whispered, just in case Hogwarts had forgotten his letter (or, more likely, in case it was a real magic spell-why hadn't Angel ever taught them useful magic like this?).

He wrapped his hands around the knob and tried to summon the feeling of magic in his body, and when he felt the faintest tingle that might actually be magic, he imagined the door springing open.

Several moments later, the door remained solidly locked. William let out a desperate sigh. He fingered the panel with the handle and the strange little guage-like thing above it. He had assumed that it was some sort of primitive meter that showed if the door was locked or unlocked, but now that he touched it, he found that it wiggled. Intrigued, he wrapped his fingers awkwardly around it and twisted.

A deadbolt slid back. William nearly collapsed with relief. He opened the door and slid out, being sure to shut it carefully behind him, and then turned and practically ran up the opposite stairs and down the halls at random until he felt far enough away from Frank and the manager. Then, collapsing out of breath against a wall, he pulled out the key again and texted the room number to Calder, who would somehow sneak his way back in and meet him there.

William decided then and there that stealing things was far too stressful, and whatever chances he had at becoming a thief were now officially null.

/

"How does this work again?" Judith asked, biting her lip against the anxiety of her first real dip into the supernatural world—her relationship with Angel notwithstanding.

"Oh, it's easy," Cordelia replied airily. "It's not even a spell, technically. It's more like a..." she faltered. "Well, okay, let's just call it a spell. The people-slash-things that sent William and Calder to Wherever They Are live in the cracks of space. That's how they got in and out of the apartment without using doors or windows: they basically poked their little heads out of the crack, did their mojo, and jumped back in. We're going to do the same, only in reverse. It shouldn't take long. You don't even have to come with me if you don't want to."

"Yes, I do," Judith replied, and sat down on the floor of Cordelia's hotel room opposite her. "I would like to meet these things face-to-face. Er…They _do_ have faces, right?"

Cordelia shrugged. "Theoretically. Here, take this and hold it in your left hand," she handed Judith a piece of incense that they had picked up at Ferguson's Occultte Shop on the way home.

"What's this for?" Judith asked.

"For clarity in helping us find the right crack," Cordelia replied. "Don't ask me how, it just works. Ready? Take my hand."

They grasped right hands as though frozen in a handshake and, following Cordelia's lead, Judith closed her eyes. Almost immediately, a buzzy, humming noise filled the room, though Judith couldn't tell if Cordelia was making it or not. Determined not to do anything that might throw them off track, however, she stayed quite still with her eyes fixedly closed. Cordy's hand was warm in hers, and with a jolt like a train jumping tracks, Judith was suddenly reminded of Evie's warm touch. She bit her lip harder.

"Here we are," Cordy said, and Judith realized that the buzzing had stopped. Cordelia released her hand as she stood up and Judith tentatively opened her eyes. The darkness was oddly tangible, like they were surrounded by deeply black walls that she could touch if she stretched out her hand far enough. Judith stood up as well, and noticed that their incense sticks were gone.

"Not quite what I was expecting," Cordy said, staring at something behind Judith. She flicked a lock of curled brown hair out of her eyes. "But I guess you can't judge a bad guy by his house…"

Judith turned and thought that she must disagree with Cordelia on this one. Standing in the middle of the solid darkness was a cheerful, immaculately pristine thatched-roofed cottage. Brightly-colored pansies grew weed-less in the flower boxes and the flagstones that they stood upon leading to polished wood door were cut and laid in such precise evenness that Judith wasn't sure such a thing was even possible where she came from. Cordelia now walked swiftly along the path to the door and knocked three times. Judith had just caught up to her when the door opened and she stifled a gasp. A tiny, rather ugly-looking childlike form glared up at them with not a curved feature on his (or her?) angular face and dark, murky, green-ish skin. It steepled its hands under its sharply-pointed chin and tapped its fingers together impatiently. Judith noticed the one hand only had three fingers, while the other had more than she count count at one glance.

"What?" it said irritably through its slanted line of a mouth.

Cordelia turned to Judith briefly and nodded. "That's one of them."

An unexpected flare of anger lit inside Judith and she stepped out from behind Cordelia to face the thing properly. "Where is my son?" she demanded.

"Don't know, don't care," a second creature, similar-looking to the first but with slightly lighter green skin, said in a sing-song tone, appearing at the door beside the other. "Who bothers us in our humble home? Us who knows nothing that need not be known?"

"An angry mother," answered a third, pulling the door open just wide enough to peer inquisitively at the visitors. This third creature looked much the same as the first two, except that the few scraggly wires that might have been hair jutting out from the top of its head had been so neatly straightened that they might have been ironed that way. Judith guessed that this was the one responsible for the neatness of the cottage. "Clearly," it added with a sneer.

"And an angry Seer if you don't tell us where you sent them soon," Cordelia said. "And by soon, I mean now."

"Them?" said the first.

"Them who?" asked the third.

"Two boys," Cordy said, "yea tall, you sent them to another dimension yesterday. I'm sure you remember."

"Didn't open a dimension-portal," sang the second with a gleeful grin. "Too dangerous, too beyond our meager skills. Can't _imagine _what you mean!"

"Oh, don't start," Cordy replied, a hand on her hip. "I _know_ you did it."

"But if you need methods of persuasion," Judith reached over and delicately picked a pansy out of the flower box, on the hunch of someone who also valued orderliness. The third gasped in horror. "I'm sure we can find a method to suit each of you…er…what are you, exactly?" Judith finished with an overly-sweet smile. The corner of Cordy's mouth twitched appreciatively.

The first, entirely unfazed by the picked flower, said with relished drama, "We are called…_The Three._"

"Oh please," Cordelia rolled her eyes. "Do you have _any_ idea how many trios I've seen call themselves 'The Three'? It's called 'originality.' Look it up."

"But we are the _original_ Thr—"

"Yeah, yeah, I've heard that before, too. Look, you can call yourselves the Three Musketeers, for all I care. Judith, that flower looks entirely too in-one-piece to me."

Judith picked off a petal and dropped it on the ground with a half smile. Her own glee in the act frightened her a tiny bit. The third gasped again and looked at the paved walkway in horror as more flower pieces littered the ground. Judith dropped the stem and picked another flower from the flowerbox with a stony glare.

"Do you have _any_ idea how hard those are to grow in this light?!" the third wailed. "_Do_ something!" it said to the others, who still did not seem terribly upset by the dead flowers.

"Where's my son?" Judith asked again.

"Wrong question," the first said.

"Why did you send them there—wherever they are?" Cordy asked.

"Don't ask, don't tell," the second growled melodically. "Don't know, just do. It's our way. It's our job."

Judith tossed another petal on the dirt-less walkway. "Did someone hire you to do it?"

"Smart one, that," said the first.

"Not if she keeps dirtying my path," the third one said, struggling to push through the other two. "Not smart at all."

Judith dropped the whole flower onto the ground to rest beside the first. The third gasped again.

"Who hired you?" she asked.

"Don't ask, don't tell," the second repeated. "Just get paid." It grinned. "Nosy people can't know what we don't know."

Judith reached over and grasped another delicate flower stem in her between her forefinger and thumb.

"No!" the third cried. "We get the job, we do the job, that's it, that's all we know. We pushed and we don't know where they landed."

"And now," the first said, "it's time."

"Time, time, time," echoed the second.

"For you to, _Go_!" the third finished. And they simultaneously shoved at the air in front of them. Judith and Cordelia flew back, the flower stem snapping in Judith's hand, and suddenly their feet hit the ground of an ally, the bright daylight blinding them. The flower dropped to the ground by Judith's feet.

"Well…" Cordelia said. "Crap."

"What now?" Judith asked despondently. The angry flare in her stomach began to melt under the weight of grief that was now settling in.

"I'm not sure," Cordy admitted. "Give me time to thi—Shh!"

Judith listened, and suddenly Cordelia pushed her back against the wall of the ally. A few seconds later, two eerily familiar voices whisked by their hiding place, and Judith watched in shock as a version of herself and Cordelia walked past the alley, Cordelia holding a small bag of incense and Judith asking exactly how they would find these people that Cordy was looking for. Judith whipped out her Palm, which had already adjusted to the satellite's signal that kept the world's date and time. She gasped slightly. "It's almost 20 minutes _before_ we left," she said in astonishment.

"Traveling to and from space cracks is never very specific," Cordelia said. "It has to do with the whole space-time continuum thing." She glanced out of the alley at their retreating past selves and sighed.

Judith let the wall of the ally support her as she began to process what they'd learned. "Nothing," she said eventually. "They told us nothing."

"Let's not say _nothing_," Cordelia started.

The anger returned quickly, and Judith stood upright. "Cordelia, not even the _things_ that took my son away know where he is, how the _hell_ are we supposed to find him?"

Cordelia crossed her arms and stood to her full height, too. Their eyes met at the same level. "I'm working on it," she said solidly, with more confidence than Judith had yet heard. "I've been working for the Powers for 500 years; I'm _good _at what I do. Look into my eyes: we're _not_ out of options."

Judith looked at her and could find no lies (though she imagined that Cordelia would have had plenty of time and opportunity to practice lying—but she decided not to think about it). She relaxed, reluctantly. "I'm sorry," she said. "Of course, you would know better than me how hopeless—"

"—Or not," Cordelia interrupted.

"Or not…the situation is." She took a deep breath. "So what _is_ our next option?"

"I need to think about it."

Judith bit her lip and nodded slowly, processing. "Perhaps we should reconvene in a bit, over dinner. I'll cook."

"Oh, you really don't need to…"

"No, I enjoy it. It soothes me. And you need time to think without me breathing down your neck. I live on the corner of 8th and Conway, Sparrow Apartments, number 225. Come when you're hungry." Then Judith gave her a small smile, though she wasn't sure what it was supposed to convey, except giving the appearance of looking better than she felt, and went home, leaving them both space for their own thoughts.

/

William and Calder's first night in the Hyperion Hotel was a restless one. They both spent the night nervously tossing and turning, tiny voices in their heads pointing out the terrifying thought that they had no idea what their next step would be—if there was a next step at all. With no idea how they got there in the first place, where were they supposed to look to reverse it? _Was_ there a reverse at all?

Plus, the gunshot in the room right below them didn't help their nerves at all.

In the morning, they argued briefly over if they should chance using room service to order breakfast. On the one hand, there weren't computers in this time era, so it would probably take a long time for one of the staff to realize that they shouldn't be there (after all, Frank couldn't be the bellhop _all_ the time-maybe he just had the night shift). On the other hand, they needed to be able to stay there as long as possible and couldn't draw any attention to themselves. But on a third hand, they were hungry. They finally decided not to risk it until they were desperate, and instead decided to focus on their problem of getting home. William and Calder each sat on their respective beds and stared at each other.

"Well…" William said. "Any ideas?"

Calder shrugged. "Get out of this room? They had terrible decorators in the 1950's. Also…it's creepy here."

William nodded and lowered his voice like he was afraid of being overheard. "I think it's the paranoia demon." He glanced around as if he could see it if he tried. "Angel said it was already here when he moved in, and it took him a while to figure out it was here because only affected a few people at first—and this is a very paranoid time in American history, so he thought it was just humans being humans."

"It can't hurt _us_, though," Calder said uncertainly. "We're safe here, right, because it's not solid? We just have to not listen to it if it targets us."

William nodded. "I think that's right… Either way, we need to figure out how to get home before things get too bad."

"Like it did for the guy with the gun downstairs?"

William swallowed. "Let's go see if Angel's a bit more cheerful this morning…"

They both stood up with a new sense of purpose. William grabbed their room key, and they made their way out of their room and to the stairs.

Fortune, it seemed, was on their side, because as they passed by the second floor, they crossed the line of sight with Angel, who seemed to be heading back to his room with some fresh ice; still somewhat bleary-eyed, though it was late morning. The boys froze as they locked eyes for a long second with Angel. He was so cold.

Angel broke the eye contact as he drew level with his unlocked door.

"Angel," William called. "Angel, just one thing." William hurried forward, but Angel ignored him and turned the handle.

"Please, just tell us where we can find an occult shop," William said, and Angel paused. William stopped several yards away from Angel, and Calder stood still by the stairs. "That's all we want," William said quietly. "And we won't bother you again."

Angel glanced at William again with slightly less chill, and said abruptly, "Go two blocks east and take a right. There's a guy there named Denver who owns a bookstore and has a reputation for dealing in…different…kinds of merchandise. Right-hand side." And then he pushed open his door, slid through it, and clicked it shut behind him.

William stood an extra few seconds before turning and returning to Calder.

"Wow," Calder said. "Good work, Will. I guess he _is_ more cheerful this morning."


	8. Chapter 8

**Chapter Eight**

Angel hadn't moved from his bed all morning. Or all night. After wandering the dark streets aimlessly for an hour or so, hoping that the motion would push the burdensome thoughts from his mind (to no avail), he sought refuge in his quiet, dark apartment. No longer dark, yet still quiet, the thoughts in Angel's mind had gathered weight rather than seeped away.

Angel hated sitting around. He really did. However many times Cordy had teased him about liking to sit alone and brood for hours on end, it wasn't usually his choice—it was his thoughts. It was the combination of confusing, frustrating, and painful thoughts that clashed together and froze him into immobility until he could make sense of them; and it was only the vampiric side of him, built for long, silent hours of stalking prey, that allowed him to brood for so long without going completely stir-crazy. Usually by now he would have gotten up to get something to eat or flipped idly through a book without even knowing what it said. But his body wasn't even close to moving in either direction. Maybe it had something to with the fact that part of him feared that if he allowed himself to move, he would find himself unable to stop from walking out the door and helping Judith and Cordy…and the Powers…find William and Calder.

The Powers. They were responsible for this whole mess that his mind was in, more than anyone could know. More than Cordelia knew and certainly more than Judith or the boys knew; they had never even heard of Connor. Angel would probably be tracking the boys down right now if it weren't for what the Powers… He closed his eyes. How could a fury that burned this much make him so inert?

He sighed: his first real movement in hours. His lungs felt creaky at the expansion and thirsty as the dry air hit them. He was pretty sure he was out of blood. Tonight, he would get more. Until then, he might twitch his hand or blink his eyes. But for the most part, his thoughts would freeze him.

/

Cordelia felt marginally better after a hot shower, a quick and restless nap, and a chocolate mint from the newly-made pillow in her hotel room. And oh yeah, the vision she had perked up her spirits a bit, too. It meant the Powers weren't _too_ upset with her for entirely failing her mission of protecting the boys, and had even decided to help her fix it. She knew other Seers who weren't nearly so lucky, although she also knew the underlying sense of anger that came with the vision was a message for her: _Don't do it again_.

A part of her wanted to bitterly reply, _Then think before sending_ me_ across Angel's path! _But of course, she held her tongue because her own reaction to Angel wasn't the fault of the Powers. She could have chosen to play catch-up and visit Connor _after_ making sure her charges were safe. The Powers would have given her that, at least, before sending her off again. But she'd failed the boys and the Powers in that, and her only comfort was the vision: at least the boys were still alive, wherever they were.

Not that she could make much else of the cryptic message. It was the most abstract vision she'd received in a long time: aching loneliness, sharp betrayal, a sensation of falling but with an element of forcefulness, and a general upset, shifting, regurgitating feeling that left her nauseous. The only part that made sense was a brief and faded image of an older William and Calder wielding swords in the face of a horde of enemies so fierce it would have made the now-legendary Buffy's blood run cold. However, the very fact that the Powers communicated with Cordy reminded her that she wasn't alone; that they _wanted_ her to solve this. That made all the difference.

Cordelia took a walk before dinner, returning to Calder's apartment to try to pick up on anything new she might have missed that morning. Mrs. Lauchley let her in again and Cordy made a show of looking for physical clues while actually searching for metaphysical ones. She found the tiny rift the three had made by the door, thin like a paper cut, and she took several moments to study it after Mrs. Lauchley had left to go do something that Cordelia hadn't bothered to pay attention to.

The rift felt different than normal. Like it was angled, even though the crack felt perfectly straight as a surgeon's cut. The Three had been doing this a long time. Cordelia pondered the rift until it she was hungry and tired of thinking enough to go for dinner, and she called a cab using the column outside the building.

A few minutes later, Cordy was at Sparrow Apartments, and Judith opened the door promptly after Cordy's knock with a warmer greeting than Cordy expected. She looked much better, as well, with a shower, a change of clothes, and, it seemed, also a short nap. The scent of something spicy curled around Judith and out into the hall and Cordy breathed deeply. No business over dinner seemed like a very good rule to adopt just then, and with a warm greeting in return, Cordelia followed Judith inside. The kitchen seemed so incomprehensible to Cordelia compared to Angel's kitchen that she didn't even bother looking around, opting instead to sit at the table in front of a pot of steaming tea.

"Would you like some?" Judith asked.

"I'd love some," Cordelia said, and Judith poured out two cups of tea.

"How are you?" Judith said, just as Cordy had taken a breath to speak.

"I was about to ask the same thing," Cordelia smiled.

"You first," Judith said, and went to stir something on what looked like a stove—at least, it was flat and thin (_too_ thin), and jutted out from the wall at about waist height with a large saucepan sitting on it, so Cordelia assumed that's what it must be.

"I'm good," she replied a little too cheerily, spooning a cube of sugar into the tea. "I'm…refreshed."

Judith nodded. "As am I." She pulled the large stirring spoon out of the spicy (and mildly sweet, now that Cordy was closer) mixture and then dipped a testing spoon in. "But that's not exactly what I meant."

Cordelia glanced up in surprise. Judith's expression briefly became a far away look as she decided which ingredient she needed to add. Then she promptly returned her attention, set the spoon down, and chose a bottle of a burnt-orange spice on the counter. Firmly tapping the small glass jar over the mixture and stirring a few more times, Judith continued,

"I don't mean to pry," she turned to look Cordy in the eye as she stirred, "I just thought you should have the opportunity to say things that you need to say. I've been in my own little world since Will went missing…but I can't imagine these past few days have been any easier on you, either, with everything going on with Angel; and I'm sure there's more than I know. Though I must say, you're handling it better than he was." She gave Cordy a small smile.

Cordy half-smiled in return. "No surprise there…" she said, glancing down at her tea and tucking one foot underneath herself. She took a deep breath, feeling unexpectedly dizzy and a bit unsettled from the dive into the topic of Angel, having spent so much recent energy on avoiding it. She had hoped that dinner might have included more pleasant conversation, and though she could so easily steer it that way, the part of her that had always voiced the hard topics—the part that had become her trademarked tactless-but-in-the-end-helpful personality quirk—told her quite persuasively to go with it this time. If Judith was offering a listening ear, even though she had every reason not to… Cordelia bit her lip and stared into her steaming tea as she said,

"So you've talked to him recently? Besides last night, I mean, with the whole…not helping decision."

"Yesterday," Judith nodded. She sat down in the chair opposite Cordelia. "Yesterday? It seems so long ago now. We ran into each other in front of his building. I play cards there with several friends every other week or so. He seemed quite a bit more confused and frustrated than you do, but that might just be because he was the one who had to make the choice."

"Yeah…" Cordelia agreed. "He never did handle decisions well. Especially not the fast ones." She cautiously sipped her tea. It was still too hot. Cordy looked up. "So…what did he tell you about all this? And by the way, in this and any other future cases, when it comes to Angel, I _do_ mean to pry. He's used to it."

A smile tugged at the corner of Judith's mouth. "What would you like to hear that would make you feel better?"

Cordelia sat and marveled at the rarity of the situation: she was temporarily speechless. "Um…" she started, then gave a small laugh. "Man, you got to the heart of it, didn't you?"

Judith shrugged. "I'm a Pillar Therapist," she said as if that explained everything.

"A what?"

"Oh, I suppose it _is _a relatively new term," Judith replied, quickly recovering from her brief surprise. "And a somewhat new position," she added. She took a moment to choose her words, and then said, "I am a third-party person of support at the hospital for patients and families-like a chaplain but without a particular religious order. So you see, it's my job to get to the heart of things."

"You must be good at it," Cordelia said. She tried the tea again to buy time. It had been so long since she was on this side of a counseling session. She wondered briefly if it was unprofessional to let the conversation continue on this track, but something in Judith's expectant gaze compelled her to speak anyway. Yes, Judith was definitely good at it. "I guess…" she said, "I want to know what he was thinking. What made him decide to—well, 'abandon' isn't the right word, but…"

"I don't know what made him decide not to help us," Judith replied. "Honestly, I thought for sure that he would. But he said, 'if it were anyone else…'"

"Other than me?"

"Other than us. He said that the Powers would use us to get to him. They already knew how much he cares for you; I don't think you were a factor in his ultimate decision. Quite the opposite, actually. But he said that the Powers That Be couldn't know that the rest of us mean enough to him to throw away the lives of the people he let die for his cause. It would have been rather touching if I weren't so furious. And also clearly, we don't mean that much to him."

Cordelia raised her eyebrows skeptically. "I don't know, I've seen Angel when he cares. He does this sometimes. You know, he has that whole, I've-got-to-protect-my-friends-by-pushing-them-away mentality. I tried to cure him of it, but it's really stuck in there." She paused to watch the tea swirl in her cup when she blew gently on it. "It's just that I'm usually there when he makes decisions like this," she continued. "And seeing his thought process—even if I don't understand it—makes it…easier somehow." Cordy glanced up. "Like I can see a few of the puzzle pieces to Angel's messed-up vampire mind. You know?"

"And you hope to figure it out when you have enough pieces?" Judith asked, standing to check whatever was in the saucepan and to fetch bowls from the cabinet.

"Less figuring out; more understanding. I know—I…_knew_ Angel pretty well. I get _what_ goes through his mind, just not _why_. Getting him to talk sometimes helps answer some of those 'whys.' I'm actually pretty impressed you got as much out of him as you did."

"I have a teenage boy," Judith said matter-of-factly. "There is surprisingly little difference."

Cordy smiled, but then hesitated. Something had just occurred to her that made her stomach knot unexpectedly and sit heavily inside her. She set down her tea cup. "Are you and Angel seeing each other?" she asked. Time and certain sensitive other-dimension-ly cultures had taught her the art of tactfulness and dancing around the bush quite well, but in cases like this she vastly preferred her old, much more efficient ways.

Judith glanced over from ladling a steaming dark orange soup into one of the bowls, a bit surprised at the question. "No," she said. The knot in Cordy's stomach relaxed. "Angel intrigues me, but I think we are not well-suited for each other. I intimidate him, for one thing." Judith smiled at Cordelia as she set down the steaming bowls and turned to fetch a small loaf of crusty, sliced bread from the counter. "Also, that sense of attraction that is generally required of such cases is simply not present—on either side, I think."

Cordy nodded. "That's a whole lot of potential awkwardness safely avoided, then."

Judith smiled again as she sat down. "Thank goodness for that. This is pumpkin curry, by the way. I probably should have asked you if you like spicy food."

"Love it," Cordy replied, scooping up a chunk of pumpkin and blowing the steam away. "It's been forever since I've had curry." She took a cautious bite.

"Then I hope it's as good as you remember."

"It's better," Cordelia responded truthfully, if obligingly, savoring the heat of the sauce lingering in her throat. She allowed a short pause before redirecting the conversation again, fully committed now to talking through this until she reached some kind of resolution.

"So back to prying into Angel's life…"

Judith gave her an amused glance that invited her to continue.

"I'm honestly a little—no, _really_—thrown off by how big a deal this whole decision was for him. I get that he wants to protect you guys—which is sweet—but back in my day his idea of protecting was a whole lot more active."

"I thought you said he had a pushing-away-friends-to-protect-them mentality?" Judith said.

"Oh, like you wouldn't believe," Cordy replied. "But he gives in if you push hard enough. Honestly, half our conversations were, 'No, Cordy, I can't let you come with me.' 'Too bad, Angel, 'cause I'm coming anyway.' Then Angel would roll his eyes and that was that. The only time he ever _actually_ pushed us away no matter how hard we fought back was… Well, I don't think Angel's going to go off and kill a bunch of lawyers again…"

"Excuse me?" Judith said in alarm, but Cordelia continued,

"Anyway, I get the protecting thing, and I also get that he hates the PTB for the whole Connor thing, but shouldn't he be over that by now? Wouldn't you be, after 200 years, if it was _your_ son? I mean, clearly the whole thing was _not_ okay and he has every right to hate the Powers, but…" Cordy had suddenly noticed Judith's expression: clouded and dark with utter confusion. Cordy frowned. "What?"

"_My_ son?" Judith said. "What whole thing? Who's Connor? _What_ lawyers?"

Cordy stared at Judith in shock. Judith and Angel had known each other for _years_ and Angel had yet to tell Judith that he had a living son, in that very city, whom he visited _every day_?

"He hasn't told you about Connor?" Cordy said softly. "At all?'

Judith shook her head. "No."

Cordelia swore under her breath in a demonic language she was fairly certain Judith did not speak.

"Who is he?" Judith asked.

Cordelia glanced into her curry, wondering if she wanted to throw herself into the telling of Connor's story (even the basics of which would take eons to describe), or if she wanted to let Angel do it, now that it was bound to come up. It was mostly his story, after all, and in the end his prerogative to choose who he told it to—whether she agreed with that choice or not. Not that that had ever stopped her before, and knowing Connor's story was more than relevant to the situation. She looked up and took a deep breath.

"Connor is Angel's son."

Judith's spoon clanged loudly into her bowl, splattering orange curry broth on the table. Cordelia slowly ate a few more bites to give time for Judith to process the rather heavy news. When Judith seemed ready to speak, Cordelia held up a hand.

"A few preliminary answers," she said, and held up a finger with each number to cover the bases: that, no, vampires can't have children without prophetic, weird mystical involvement, who Darla was, that Connor was human-plus-a-bit-extra, and, "Four: I have no idea why Angel never told you about him. My guess: it's a long, painful story filled with betrayal, lost-loves, murder, lies, and death. And that's just in the first 18 months after Connor was born."

Judith breathed in deeply; Cordy could see the dizziness in her eyes. "My god…" she said softly.

"Personally," Cordy continued, "I don't think that's a good enough reason not to tell you about him after all these years, considering Connor's here in the city."

Judith's head snapped up. "He _is_?"

"Angel moved him here to live in the land of his heritage. Connor's living in a retirement home near here. St.-Someone's."

"St. Anthony's?" Judith asked.

Cordelia nodded, "That sounds right. I was kind of blown away myself, so I didn't really pay much attention to the signs, but that could be it."

"That's hardly ten minutes from here. I used to visit my aunt there… I can't even…" Judith rubbed her forehead, breathed in deeply again, and then looked up. "What on earth happened to Connor that would keep Angel from telling us about him?"

"Well," Cordy said, picking up another piece of bread and tearing the crust off to chew intermittently between sentences. "Same thing that made him so mad at the PTB, I guess. There was a whole line of preventable incidents that happened, which Angel blames the PTB for. The cliffnotes _of_ the cliffnotes version is that Connor was kidnapped and raised in a hell dimension by a guy who hated Angel because of what Angel did to his family in his evil-vampire days. Being the special, prophesied kid that Connor was, he was used and lied to by a whole lot of different people, my hijacked-and-possessed-by-an-evil-demigoddess-body included, and in the end was so messed up—and I mean the kind of messed up that goes all terrorist with homemade bombs strapped to people; to _kids_—that Angel cut a deal with the devil to give him a normal life—i.e. to _not_ be Angel's son anymore. Except in the biological sense."

Judith frowned, trying her best to follow.

"Essentially," Cordy continued, "the lovely evil people at Wolfram & Hart Law Firm took Connor away and gave everyone new memories. No one who knew him as Angel's son remembered anything about him, and they gave Connor and his new family memories of him being raised in a loving, stable household. Call it the mystical version of adoption."

"And that's why Angel killed the lawyers?" Judith asked.

Cordy had to give her props for trying to understand the story, however hopeless it might be. "No, that was pre-Connor," she replied. "Forget about the lawyers for now. Anyway, Angel and I were the only ones left with our real memories intact, for some reason. I was in a coma at the time—body-hijacking, remember—so they probably didn't bother to change my memories, and Angel…well, I guess he's just not allowed to be happy. I've actually wondered if his curse went farther than just the sex thing; you know, if the curse actively tries to prevent happiness."

"_What_?" Judith's confusion was almost painful to look at now.

"Oh, now _don't_ tell me he hasn't told you about the curse," Cordy said incredulously, fully prepared to be furious at Angel for neglecting to mention that he might someday turn evil and kill them all.

"Well, the curse of his soul, of course, and that it could be broken by a moment of perfect happiness," Judith replied.

"Oh good," Cordy replied, breathing a sigh of relief.

"But…" Judith said, "the sex thing?"

"Oh, well, we didn't find out the happiness side of the curse until after he…you know…with his girlfriend."

Judith gave a nod of bewildered understanding.

"Anyway, back to Connor," Cordy continued. "I'm not really sure what happened after Angel gave Connor up, except that Connor apparently got his memories back eventually—but of course he had a stable, if completely fake, background, and could deal with his real past by then—and I don't know anything else. Angel wasn't very forthcoming about the intervening 200 years, and I didn't really push it. I just wanted to see Connor when I found out he was still here."

Judith swallowed. "And did you say it was all preventable?"

"In theory," Cordelia replied. "There was a lot going on behind the scenes that we didn't know about until it was too late. But I had the visions, so Angel thinks the Powers should have warned us about it all beforehand."

"I would be inclined to agree," Judith said.

"And you would still be this furious after 200 years?"

Judith took a breath. "Do you have any children, Cordelia?"

"No," Cordy replied. "I mean, _technically_ I gave birth to the demi-goddess that took over my body, but I went into a coma after that and never really got a chance to do the mother-daughter bonding thing. Connor," Cordy took a deep breath to dispel the intense ickiness that overcame her on the few occasions she allowed herself to think about their relationship, "was the closest I ever got to having a child."

Judith swallowed and nodded. "It's different than you'd expect. It's powerful and often frightening, how deeply you care for one little person. I had no idea—none—how much having a child would change my views of what love is. I thought I'd experienced it all before Will came along." She met Cordelia's eyes. "I was so very wrong."

Cordy swallowed this time, again temporarily lost for words. "I think," she said after a moment, "that this whole thing with William and Calder is bringing up bad memories for Angel. He understands your position a little too well."

"Could…" Judith started. "Could the same thing happen to me? When we find Will, would he be… No, never mind. He'll be alright."

"He'll be more than alright," Cordelia assured her. "If he were a lost cause, the Powers would have sent me on to something else by now."

Judith gave a small smile, nodded, and picked her spoon again to continue eating her cooling dinner. Cordelia did the same, and they spent several minutes in silence, each lost in her own thoughts. When Cordy had eaten her last bite, she set her spoon down and contemplated the empty bowl bottom for a few seconds. Then, fearing that she already knew the answer, she said suddenly,

"Can I ask you something?"

Judith looked up. "Of course."

"Did… Had you ever heard of me…before all of this?"

Judith set her spoon down with a soft _clink_. "No," she answered. "William said he remembered your name from Angel's stories. He only ever told the boys stories about his adventures when they were growing up, and me almost nothing at all." She paused. "Except that he went to hell once."

"So he _did_ tell you about Buffy?" Cordelia said in a somewhat incensed tone.

"Who?"

A small part of Cordy's stomach relaxed. "Guess not. Not even the love of his life gets a mention. Like none of us existed."

"I don't think he meant it like that."

"I don't either," Cordy replied, standing up to take her dish to the sink. "But funny thing about people: they don't actually die if someone still remembers them. I kept my family alive by telling the few friends I have about them; even the painful stuff. If I'd have known that Angel wouldn't do the same…" She shook her head, then turned away to wash her dish in the sink. Judith let her scrub in silence, knowing better than to point out where the dishwasher was.


	9. Chapter 9

**Chapter Nine**

William and Calder found the bookstore with relative ease—once they figured out which way was east (Calder had made a comment about the primitive lives of people without personal GPS's, tapping fruitlessly at buttons on William's now-useless Palm while William tried to block the device from public view). Denver was only marginally helpful, as he seemed more interested in his magazine (which had a suspiciously false cover) than in helping two kids find a book about time-traveling. But when William offered to pay for it using a 23rd century Irish coin, he suddenly became much more attentive and gave them three volumes that held some marginal promise.

William and Calder spent the rest of the day at the hotel, shooing away nagging thoughts of doubt like flies, so that by early afternoon they were just as exhausted from trying not to be distracted as they were from deciphering the syntax of the ancient texts. Never before had they appreciated how good Angel was at choosing books for them to read that they'd actually like.

Suddenly, Calder shoved himself off his bed. "I need to breathe," he announced. He pulled on his shoes and William watched him leave and close the door behind him. Then William slowly stood up to open the window by his bed, as though the breeze might carry away some of the buzzing thoughts in the room—either that or the noise outside might drown it out. William breathed a quiet sigh of relief and dropped back down on his bed again to flip through the smallest of the three books. A slight breeze toyed with his dark hair, still mussed from sleep and lack of a brush to fix it. Calder wore the look much better than William did, and he imagined that the first thing his mother would do when-if...no, _when_-they were reunited would be to fix it with several quick sweeps of her fingers. William had tried to imitate her movements that morning in front of the mirror, but to no avail.

_They've left you,_ his mind suddenly said, as though the wind had carried the thought straight into his ear. His stomach clenched, and he tried to focus in the words on the page. _What are you going to do now?_

"I don't know," he mumbled, surprised to hear his voice out loud. The sound snapped him out of it a bit and he shook himself, bending over the book with a new fervor. There had to be a solution _somewhere_.

_And what will you do if you find it?_ he asked himself. _You've never done magic by yourself._

"Calder's coming back," William said. "We'll figure it out."

_He left. _

_Just like Dad._

"He'll be back soon," William said confidently.

_He never said he would come back._

"Stop it, you're being ridiculous."

_Am I?_

"Of course you are. Now shut up, brain. I need to concentrate."

/

Angel's foot hit a piece of broken glass on the ground. It clinked against the other shards, echoing quietly off the mountainous walls of cement bricks on either side of him. The glass crunched under his shoe, each individual snap clear and distinct in the stillness. A lone rat scampered away from its discarded candy morsel, scared away like all other living creatures by the invisible wall that preceded Angel. Even the small community of heroin addicts that frequented the area had left, as though they felt him coming.

And Angel was not one to be crossed at the moment. He hadn't eaten all day and his head was beginning to throb—in addition to the ache already caused by lack of sleep and a day's worth of _not_ reaching a conclusion about if the choice he had made was the right one. He kicked at an empty, cracked vodka bottle and it shattered away from him like a spray of water.

Angel knew it would hit a split second before it did. That familiar tingling behind his eyes sparked and flashed, and he gasped. He closed his eyes tight against it. Then the pain slammed into him, and he in turn slammed into the ground. The shards of glass pushed into his hands and knees, and for all he knew sped through his body and cut to his brain like ice on a driving wind. He saw William and Calder in bright flashes. He tried to close his eyes to shield against the brightness, forgetting that they were already closed. He saw ancient cars, the roaring deafening his ears, though the only real sound in the alley was the cries that came from his own throat. He saw the Hyperion Hotel, clearer than memory, and he felt the iciness and pain of forced distance as he threatened to crush a scared kid's foot for his own good.

And suddenly, cooling blackness soothed his mind. He pulled in ragged gasps to distract himself against the hundreds of tiny glass bites in his skin and remnants of vision sparks.

Slowly, he opened his eyes. The ground glittered with glass and blood. Angel gingerly sat back on his heels and looked at his hands. Through slightly blurred eyes, which were always a temporary effect of visions, the way the white moon caught his palms made it look as though he might have been an ivory statue cupping a treasure of diamonds and rubies. Angel closed his eyes again and shook his head gently.

The visions were supposed to be gone. He wasn't working for the Powers anymore—he thought they'd taken that curse away after what happened with the child…

It was a brilliant move on their part, he thought. Cruel, but brilliant.

The rat's tiny feet padded cautiously back into the moonlight, returning for its candy, and Angel shuddered against the cold that he didn't feel.

/

"Suicide!" Calder cried as he slammed the door behind him with his foot.

"What?" William jumped at the noise. "You're back!"

"That gunshot we heard last night? Suicide!" Calder hopped onto his bed without bothering to take his shoes off. "They're all talking about it down there—the guy just…" He mimed shooting his own head and let himself fall onto the mattress so hard he bounced up and down several times, making his the squeakiest, thump-iest fake death William had ever seen. "Right below us, like, right there! If we could look through our floor, we'd see…" But he trailed off as he and William glanced at their dirty gray carpet, looking somehow even more faded and old in the late afternoon sunlight. They each swallowed.

"I don't like the 1950's," William said.

"Me neither…I also don't like this paranoia demon…" Calder said. Silence fell briefly, and the buzzing worries started to return to both of them. "I think it's affecting me."

William nodded. "Me too. But I never realize it until after the fact. We need to get out of here…"

Calder nodded in agreement and glanced toward William's book. "Any luck?"

William shook his head and sighed, picking the book up. "I wish this thing had a search function."

"_I_ wish I had magical powers and I could just snap us back home," Calder said, snapping his fingers in demonstration. "And then I wouldn't _need_ a search button." He paused. "I also wouldn't need to go to school, or put the dishes away…and I could teleport anywhere I wanted…and have the best chefs cook all my meals…and be rich…"

"I wish the Angel we know was here," William said glumly, thumbing the next page over. "_Were_ here," he automatically corrected himself, as if his mother could hear him across 250 years. "He could tell us what to do."

"That's about as useful as me wishing for magic powers," Calder said. Silence fell for a few moments while William flipped through a few more pages without really reading them.

"We're never getting out of here, are we?" William said eventually. "We're going to grow old and die, staring at either this stupid book or that ugly paint job."

"I think we'll die before we get anywhere near old, if those are our only two options," Calder replied. They both fell into silence for a moment as they thought about the morbid turn their thoughts had taken.

"Don't listen to it," William mumbled. He idly flipped another page in the book.

There was a faint rumbling in the silence between them—each of the boys took it to be another ancient motor roaring outside, but they began to take notice of it when their beds started tremble in matching frequency. They looked at each other as the rumbling got louder, and they cried out loud as the earth gave a mighty lurch, tossing them off the beds, and then lurched again.

"Earthquake!" Calder cried, rather unnecessarily, but by the time they managed to push themselves up to a crawling position, the quake had stopped.

They looked at each other, panting heavily, hearts thudding in anticipation. "There could be aftershocks…" Calder said, again rather unnecessarily. "We should get under cover."

They stood cautiously and stumbled over to the dark bathroom doorway, sitting with their backs each against a frame and their knees touching as they pulled their bodies in as tightly as they could, which was only slightly easier for William, with the leaner build of the two.

"We _are_ supposed to find a doorframe, right?" William said after a minute of intense listening for more earth grumblings. "I mean, it's one of those things they always tell you, but you never expect to need to know it, so…"

"We could look it up if we had a signal," Calder muttered grumpily. "How did people find out stuff in this time? It takes _forever_ to do anything!"

William sighed. "Maybe we should go downstairs. See what everyone else is doing."

"It's California, earthquakes happen all the time here. I bet they'd laugh at us and keep talking about the suicide downstairs." Calder glanced at the floor again as if he could see through it. Then he frowned. "Will…I just realized…That guy was right next to Angel's room."

William shifted in his uncomfortable position. "So?"

Calder shrugged. "Probably nothing." He let his thoughts sort out before speaking again. "It's just kind of weird, isn't it? Angel just got his soul…he doesn't like people…he's kind of like an addict, isn't he? Do you think he ever…" Calder swallowed.

William narrowed his eyes. "What are you saying, Cal?"

"You know…" Calder said quietly, not looking at William. "It's convenient, is all… He had to have slipped at least once…"

"Angel would never do that," William said quietly but firmly.

"You don't know that," Calder replied. "He might have."

"No," William said, standing up. "He wouldn't. And if we can't trust him that much, we're never getting home."

Calder stood up, too. "Why not? He's not helping us now! Will, when are you going to—" But he jumped suddenly and stared with wide eyes at something in the dark bathroom. "What. The _bloody hell?_..." He backed away quickly.

"What?" William asked, also backing away even though he had no idea what they were running from.

"You didn't see it?"

"What?"

"A thing…or a thing's shadow… I don't know, but _something_ is in there."

"Like…what kind of something?"

"Like…the _Who-The-Hell-Cares_ kind and the _Let's-Get-The-Hell-Out-Of-Here-Before-It-Gets-Us_ kind and the_ If-I-Had-A-Proper-Sword-I'd-Kill-The-Hell-Out-Of-It-Right-Now_ kind and every other kind I can think of that I can swear at because that's all I've got right now."

"Oh," William said meekly. "_That_ kind. I thought maybe it could be the Paranoia Demon kind."

"That, too. As in, The-Kind-That-Took-A-Lightning-Bolt-To-Kill kind. Where'd we put that dagger?"

"In the drawer."

Calder leaped for the dresser, found the dagger, and held it up in a striking position, motioning William toward the hall door with his head. William took a last look toward the bathroom. It might have been his frightened imagination, but he didn't think so: something definitely moved in there. He jumped and cried out loud, making Calder do the same, and they ran out the door.


	10. Chapter 10

**Chapter Ten**

William and Calder nearly crashed into Angel on their way to the front door. He had been going upstairs when they ran around the corner on their way down and stumbled to a halt just two steps above Angel. The girl who had been outside Angel's door the night before—Judy—stood just a step or two behind, nervously glancing around the lobby as though each pair of eyes were spotlights searching for her.

"Angel!" Calder cried before either of the adults' surprised expressions could turn into annoyance. He glanced quickly at Judy, lowered his voice, and said through heavy breaths, "Angel, there's something here! In the hotel!"

Angel turned back to Judy. "I'll see you later," he said.

She nodded with slight puzzlement and continued up to her room.

Angel turned back to the boys. "I know," he said.

"Oh good," William said, and then frowned. "How?"

"I heard it," Angel said. "Something's…whispering."

"We'll do you one better," Calder said. "We just saw it."

"Where?"

"In our room."

Angel glanced between the two of them. "Show me."

The boys turned instantly and led the way back to their room, which in their haste they hadn't even locked. They let Angel enter first.

"In the bathroom," William pointed, and Angel cautiously approached the doorway. He stared into the darkness for a few moments, then stepped forward and turned on the light. He looked back at the boys.

"It's gone," he said, and William and Calder relaxed.

"Where'd it go?" Calder wondered rhetorically as he made his way to the bathroom entrance and peered in.

Angel shrugged.

"You can track it, right?" William asked, looking over Calder's shoulder into the brightly-lit room, and hoping in a weird way that he hadn't just imagined what he saw.

Angel was silent for a moment, staring at the two boys.

William glanced up and caught Angel's stare. He shifted uncomfortably. "What?" he asked.

Calder turned, too.

Angel glanced briefly between them, and then said, "I should figure out what it is first."

"It's a paranoia demon," William said.

Angel frowned at him skeptically. "How…?"

"We're from the future," William said. "We told you. Just trust us: It's a paranoia demon."

"What kind?" Angel said slowly.

William and Calder looked at each other and they shrugged.

"There's more than one kind?" Calder asked.

Angel slowly started walking toward the door. "I need to figure out which kind it is," he said.

"We'll help," William offered.

Angel stopped and turned his head to glance at each of them again, and then turned to leave the room. The boys looked at each other, silently agreed that it wasn't a _no_, and followed after him.

/

"So what do we do now?" Judith asked, replacing the cream jar on the coffee table and swirling the caramel-colored tea in her cup with a spoon. She congratulated herself on how steady she'd kept her voice. She'd been wanting to ask this all evening but had held back to give Cordelia some space. Though she'd already given up hope that Cordelia had a complete solution—she would have said something by now if she had—Judith still held tightly onto the hope that Cordelia might have had at least a small breakthrough.

"Well," Cordelia said, and Judith noticed that Cordelia was uncharacteristically not meeting her eyes. "Honestly…I'm not sure."

Judith pursed her lips to hold back the bitter disappointment. "Hm," she said, and took a sip of tea to give Cordelia a chance to further explain what she meant—and herself a chance to remain calm.

"In missions like this, it usually it goes something like this," Cordy said. "I get a vision, I go to that dimension, pick up all the pieces I find, and I put them together in a nice big puzzle. Easy as pie on a Sunday afternoon. If the pieces don't fit, the Powers give me something to fill in the gaps. They _did_ send me a vision this afternoon—"

Judith's head jerked up. "And you're just _now_ telling me?"

Cordelia gave her a patient look. "They sent me a vision, but it makes absolutely _no _sense. I've been trying to figure it out, believe me, but I don't think they've ever sent me one this vague—including the one about the Ugly Grey Blobby Thing."

Judith frowned. "What was it? Today's vision, not the… Grey… Blobby… Whatever."

Cordy's gaze became distant as she tried to recall the vision. "Just lots of emotions and feelings—and some sound, but not much. It's like they only sent me half the vision; like they got some wires crossed in the transmission and the video didn't come through."

Judith only vaguely understood the metaphor, but she didn't really need to understand it. "And what do you make of it?"

Cordy took a sip of her tea. "Mostly…that the PTB are still on our side. They want us to find William and Calder just as much as we do. And that helps."

"In a sense," Judith agreed. "But that's not concrete enough for me. There must be _something_ else we can do. We could go back to the Lauchley's to look for more clues, or use a…I don't know, a knowledge spell or _something_. What other divining powers do you have?"

"That's it. I've used all the tools I have. I just have to go over everything I know until I figure it out." Cordy sighed and muttered quietly, "This would be so much easier if…"

Judith pressed her lips together even tighter and took a deep breath. "One would think that the Powers That Be would give their agents better tools to work with. If they're so powerful and all-knowing, why can't they just give you all the information and abilities you need? William and Calder could have been _home_ by now."

Cordelia gave Judith a knowing smile. "Believe me, I've been there. And those are the same questions Angel's been asking since everything with Connor happened. But if I've learned anything over the past 500 years working with the Powers, it's that they _do_ know more than we do, and if they're not telling us something, it's for a good reason. There are other forces to be reckoned with and other paths to be crossed before this is all over. Timing is _everything_. It might just be that giving us a hard puzzle to figure out gives the other factors a chance to catch up."

"And what do I do in the meantime?" Judith asked. Cordelia glanced up. "You must understand that I cannot just sit here and wait. I can't even sit here and puzzle over the pieces, Cordelia, my _son _is _missing_. What did Angel do when Connor went missing?"

Cordelia gave a slight nod of understanding. "Went crazy," she replied. "He used dark magic to find Connor that nearly killed us all."

"And do you understand," Judith said as evenly as she could. "That I am quite ready to do exactly the same thing? Give me the words, Cordelia, give me ritual, and I will do it."

"Yeah, I get it, Judith, I do. I'm working on—"

Something in Judith's pocket beeped and they both jumped. Frowning, Judith pulled out her Palm.

"It's from Angel," Judith said in surprise, and opened the message as Cordelia moved quickly to look over Judith's shoulder. It read,

_Los Angeles. 1952._

"What?" Judith asked. "What does he mean?"

Cordelia straightened up, thinking. Judith could hardly stand the suspense.

"Cordelia?" Judith asked again.

"I don't know," Cordy replied, wandering painfully slowly back to her seat and lowering herself onto it, lost in thought. "Angel was there in the early 1950's; he had me research the Hyperion Hotel once, where he was living. But it can't still be there."

"Most likely not," Judith agreed.

They fell into a long, contemplative, and, for Judith, edgy silence. A slight anger burned in her gut that Angel hadn't given them more to go on—and had given it electronically rather than in person. Clearly, he thought they were supposed to understand the message as he gave it to them, but once again Judith found herself without any of the proper information to figure out what he meant.

But then again, he _had_ sent the message to her, not Cordelia. Was the answer really as simple as "Los Angeles. 1952"?

Hesitantly, Judith spoke. "Cordelia…You don't suppose that William is…That they're…_in_ 1952 Los Angeles. Do you?"

Cordy frowned. "They could be…" she conceded. "I mean, it's possible." Her face brightened slightly in realization. "Hey, the lackeys said that they hadn't opened a portal to another dimension, but they didn't say anything about another _time_. Oh…_oh_…" Cordelia held up a hand and Judith waited with a pounding heart for the pieces to finish clicking into place in Cordelia's mind.

Finally, Cordelia looked up at Judith and smiled. "They fell off their path," she said simply.

Judith wrinkled her brow. "What?"

"You know how some people—who shall remain Angel—tend to fall off their path metaphorically? I think that William and Calder fell off theirs _literally_."

"Is that possible?"

"If it can be metaphorical, it can be literal."

Judith frowned in confusion. She was usually quite good at grasping abstract and philosophical topics, but this was crossing the line into the physical, which was a line that she had, until now, thought quite solid. "I don't understand. How do you _physically_ fall off your _metaphorical_ life path?"

"You don't," Cordelia replied. "Usually, you're pushed."

That didn't help Judith in the slightest. "By what?"

Cordelia gave Judith a significant look. "By some_one_ who really doesn't like where you're heading in life. Especially if you grow up to, oh I don't know, become a Champion and battle the forces of darkness…Perhaps defeat some great Big Bad that really doesn't want to be defeated, and who, say, might have been forewarned about the coming of said Champion. Prophecies happen."

Judith swallowed. "The person that hired the Three."

"Exactly."

Judith took a minute to organize her thoughts. "So they were pushed of their path and landed in 1952 Los Angeles? Why there? Why then?"

Cordelia shifted in her seat as she thought about how to explain it. "Think of it this way," she said finally. "When you're pushed and you lose your balance, you grab onto something to try and stop the fall, right? Something prominent, something strong, something you know will never fail you or let you go…Judith, what is the one thing that 1952 L.A. and 2214 Galway have in common?"

Judith nodded. "Angel. They reached out for Angel."

"Who wouldn't?" Cordy said.

"And would the Angel of 1952 help them? That wasn't long, relatively speaking, after he was cursed."

Cordelia was quiet for a moment. "I didn't know Angel back then, but he kind of had a mopey, emo, I-hate-the-world-'cause-the-world-hates-me attitude, so I'm guessing…no."

"Well, then," Judith said, "_we_ need to go help them."

"We do," Cordy agreed. "But we also need more info."

"Like what?"

"Like confirmation. This whole being-pushed-off-their-paths thing is still in theory stage, and time travel is _hugely_ restricted; we're hardly even allowed to wistfully daydream about it without damn good reason. Angel's message didn't even say '_They're in_ 1952 Los Angeles,' so his practically-marital commitment to vagueness means that we have to do some extra digging and, unfortunately for him, it means that the digging has to be done around him." Cordy stood up. "Let's go."

"To Angel's?" Judith asked, standing also.

"Of course," Cordy replied. "He can't expect to give us information without an explanation behind it; not with all this PTB-hating, moral-dilemma, no-one-can-know-I-care crap he's given us." She yanked open the apartment door a little harder than she meant to, Judith following closely behind. "He's not _that_ stupid."

/

Angel sat, as usual, in the dark. The dark helped him slip into denial much more effectively than light, and denial was the last thing he had to hold onto. The deepest part of him knew that pressing _send_ would not be the end of it; that in less than an hour Cordelia and Judith would be standing in front of him, demanding answers. But luckily, the deepest part was often the easiest to ignore, and Angel contented himself with thinking that he'd given them plenty to go on, and they would be researching ways to pull someone out of the past at that very moment, too busy to give a thought to how he knew where William and Calder were. It would be best that way. He had only partially broken his vow against the Powers. If it were possible to send the message anonymously, he would have done it, and kept himself even farther from crossing the line of working on their side.

The pounding on the door and Cordelia's insistent voice that he open it were therefore not _entirely_ unexpected, even if it did startle him. He ignored it, knowing that she would come in on her own and wondering why he hadn't thought to lock the door. It opened, and the lights flooded on. Angel shut his eyes against it and two sets of feet marched with equal fervor across the hardwood floor to position themselves intimidatingly in front of him. Why did they _both_ have to come? He cracked his eyes open at their towering figures. Cordelia held up her hand, which was somehow smeared with his blood. Had he remembered to wipe off the doorknob? Not that he really cared at that moment, but the neighbors would start to wonder eventually… He opened his eyes a bit wider as they got used to the light.

"You wanna answer some questions, Angel?" Cordy said. Of course he didn't, but it wasn't like he could say so. "Starting with whose blood is on the doorknob and why it's there, and ending with a full explanation of the message you sent us. Complete sentences are required."

"I would say the other way around," Judith interrupted. "Being as I really don't care whose blood is on the doorknob. Do you know where my son is?"

Angel glanced at her. "Yes," he replied. "And now you do, too." He stood up, partly to close the door block any curious ears, and partly to regain some semblance of power in the group. He used his knuckles to push the door shut, as he'd not bothered to pull the glass out of his palms, rather liking the distraction of physical pain.

"How do you know?" Judith pressed, following him to the door. "How are you sure?"

"I just am," Angel replied. "It's probably best if we just leave it at that."

"Wrong," Cordy said, flanking Judith and cornering Angel against the wall. "Try again."

Angel glanced between the two of them, the silence dragging. There was a brief unspoken battle of wills, which Angel quickly realized he was not going to win. He sighed and finally said, "I had a vision."

Cordelia's jaw dropped slightly, but Judith's frown only deepened.

"You get visions?" Judith asked in a tone that was a little more seething and incensed than Angel thought the situation warranted.

"I used to," Angel said. "I thought the Powers took them away after… After I wouldn't save the people I saw in them anymore."

"Apparently not," Judith said coldly.

"No," Angel agreed. "Apparently not."

"What did you see?" Cordy asked.

Angel swallowed. "The Hyperion, William and Calder, me. Mid-twentieth century cars." He shrugged. "They're in 1952—Los Angeles. I don't know why, I don't know how."

Judith scrutinized him. "You're sure it's 1952?" she asked.

"Positive," he replied. "It was a memorable year."

There was a brief pause. "And the blood?" Cordy asked, holding up her palm again.

Angel looked at his own torn palms, and Cordy and Judith gasped. "Fell on some glass when the vision hit," he said.

"And you just _forgot_ to take the glass out?" Cordy said, tentatively drawing one of his hands closer with a slight touch of her fingertips so that she could look at it more carefully. After a moment's glance, she seemed to realize that there were other things she needed to focus on, and suddenly let his hand go.

"So how are we getting my son back?" Judith asked.

Cordelia looked over at her. "We go back in time," she said.

"There aren't any spells to do that," Angel said. "You can change memories, create alternate realities, but there are only a few creatures that have the ability to bend time."

"And I'm one of them," Cordy said. Angel stared at her. "Not that I've ever done it before, but I've been on board with the PTB long enough to earn certain privileges. It's like their idea of a pay raise." She rolled her eyes slightly at the thought.

"And you can just…jump back in time?" Angel said, a small fist of excitement gripping his stomach. "Whenever you want?"

Cordelia narrowed her eyes at him. "Privilege," she repeated slowly, an edge of finality in her voice. "As in: for business, not pleasure." The fist let go reluctantly.

"Then let's go," Judith said, turning to Cordelia to follow her lead. But Cordelia stayed where she was, still looking at Angel.

"I'm going to give you one more chance," she said, her voice beginning to harden again. "You don't deserve it, but—God only knows why—I'm giving it to you anyway. Are you coming with us?"

Angel hesitated, a little too long. He could feel their combined anger build against him again, feeding on each other. "There are things you don't understand," he said.

"So make us," Cordy replied with an eerie quiet.

Angel swallowed; his fists clenched around the glass shards and they cut satisfyingly deeper into his palm. "It's too painful," he said simply.

"And we couldn't possibly understand pain," Cordelia said, her voice trembling with effort to keep control.

"Not like this," Angel replied.

"_Hello!_" Cordelia cried. "I died because I gave birth to a _fully grown woman_. I went temporarily _insane_ because Wolfram and Hart sent a demon to give me never-ending visions that made me feel the pain of countless victims over and _over_ again! I have been impaled, had my heart broken—_multiple_ times—and I watched Doyle die in front of my own eyes, completely _powerless_ to stop it. Don't you _dare_ pull the King of Pain card on me now! What the hell kind of vengeance did you swear on the PTB, Angel? 'Cause even _I_ can't hold a cold shoulder for 200 years!"

"I told you already!" Angel snapped, and glanced at Judith, who was directing such a cold stare at him that it briefly threw him off some of his anger. "I told both of you," he said.

"Oh don't you give me that, Mister!" Cordy said, and Angel turned back to her, heat rising again. "I know when something else is going on, and—"

"Connor." Judith interrupted suddenly, icily. The room fell dead silent. Angel stared at her in shock; a boulder landed in his gut, and he found that he was unable to look away from her frozen gaze; her stormy blue-grey eyes sparkling like lightning. He was trapped there, and suddenly, he felt a little bit terrified.

"It's always about our children, isn't it Angel?" Judith said with a calm so forced her voice shook to keep it down. A lump rose in Angel's throat and he couldn't swallow it away. "We do what we must to protect them, no matter how irrational or who else gets hurt in the process. I know that. So Angel…put yourself in my shoes for just a minute. Ask yourself: right now, is your son's need greater than my son's?"

Judith took several steps forward. "If it is," she continued, "then I understand. I really do." The gaze softened briefly enough to let Angel glance at the floor.

"But _when_ I get my son back," the ice in her voice returned instantly and Angel felt forced to look at her again, "I can't be sure I'd trust you to see him anymore."

Angel did not move for several seconds; then he nodded once in understanding. He paused, and glared accusingly at Cordelia.

"Hey," she said, raising her hands, "Connor came up in _normal_ conversation. You can't blame me for doing something you should have done years ago."

"How much did you tell her?" he asked quietly.

"The basics. I think I narrowed everything I knew down to five sentences. Maybe six. I was pretty impressed with myself."

Angel was, too, but he didn't say it. He swallowed and looked at the floor. He felt oddly empty, even though his mind was so full his head hurt. He listened to the argument again in his thoughts, and at last, he made a decision. He spoke, "Then I have something to tell you. Both of you. But it's kind of a long story; you might want to sit down."

Nobody moved for several seconds; eventually Cordy turned and sat down slowly on the couch, staring at him with the look of a stern judge that said that his story better be worth it. Judith remained standing rigidly in front of Angel.

"William is fine for now," Angel said. "They're not in much danger." Yet.

Judith blinked once, then reluctantly sat down on an armchair, her back still stiff and jaw still set with anger.

"The story takes place over a year after Cordy died," Angel began. "I was angry at the Powers for everything that happened already. But that's not what made me turn against them." Silence fell as Angel tried to decide how to start his story.

"What did?" Cordy finally prompted, her voice still hard.

Angel looked at her. "They tried to kill Connor," he said, then pulled in a breath and looked at Judith. "And then they did something a whole lot worse."


	11. Chapter 11

**Chapter Eleven**

**Los Angeles, 2006 **

Angel slid with unconscious ease from shadow to shadow on a late muggy summer's night, a paper bag from the butcher in one hand and a cell phone in the other. He had only two contacts in his speed dial and he almost never used the one he was dialing now, but he felt that tonight's reason was good enough to warrant a quick call.

"Hey, Connor," Angel said after the voicemail beeped.

"Hey, Dad," Connor said, stepping out of a side alley just ahead of Angel.

Angel stopped, trying not to look too surprised at Connor's sudden appearance, and snapped his phone shut. "You didn't answer your phone," he said, and resumed his course.

"Left it at home," Connor shrugged, falling into step beside Angel. "What's up?"

"New vampire nest about a block that way," Angel replied, nodding his head behind them. "Thought you might be interested in taking it out."

"You mean you want me to take it out for you." Connor said.

Angel said nothing at first, then he shrugged. "Well, it's a bit of a territorial thing," he admitted, ignoring Connor's rolling eyes. "But mostly I thought you'd want to know. Might be good practice for some of the kids in your group."

"Yeah," Connor agreed. "Probably. Thanks."

"Sure."

A familiar silence fell, and the two listened to the sounds of their footsteps until one of them couldn't take it anymore. "So how've you been?" Angel finally asked.

Connor shrugged again. "Pretty good. Slaying monsters, helping rebuild Los Angeles. It's fulfilling, doing good. You should try it sometime."

"I did," Angel replied. "You're right: it is fulfilling."

"What changed?"

Angel's foot hit a Sprite can and it clattered away from them. "We've talked about this before Connor."

"Yeah, yeah," Connor said. "The Powers That Be changed everything. I remember." He flicked a mosquito away from the spot on his arm where it had just bitten him. "It's kind of nice, though, having a sense of purpose. I'm not sure how you live without it."

"You're my purpose, Connor."

"How touching. Tell that to the people you're_ not_ saving. 'Sorry, my son, who's perfectly capable of protecting himself, needs me for…I don't know…tips about vampire nests.' Think it'll fly?"

Angel glared quietly at him, but didn't respond. They came to the point where their paths home split and stopped.

"Well," Connor said. "I'm going to go kill things. We'll take out the vamp nest later this week."

"Be careful." Angel said.

Connor rolled his eyes and turned to walk away. "See you around, Dad."

"See you, Connor," Angel said, watching his son slip away into the shadows.

/

Angel woke to the beep of his phone just a few hours before dawn. Nina stirred beside him. He rolled over and groggily answered the phone without looking at the caller. There was a din of noise on the other end: shouting, groaning, roaring… Connor yelling out instructions. Angel's insides twisted and he sat bolt upright.

"Mm?" Nina opened one eye blearily.

"Help us!" a young, Hispanic-accented voice said into the phone before it went dead.

Angel threw the phone aside and stood up, stumbling to find his clothes in the dark.

"What's wrong?" Nina mumbled, pulling the covers up over her shoulders.

"I don't know," Angel replied, his stomach weighted in cold and nauseating lead. He gave up on the top three buttons of his shirt, knowing that his now-thick and clumsy fingers would find their grace and strength in the hilt of his sword as he drove it through whatever, or whoever, was threatening Connor. "I'll be back later." He left the apartment.

The world blurred by Angel and before he realized it, Angel found himself inside Connor's condemned apartment building, rushing up the stairs toward the growls, grunts, thuds, and yells of pain and panic.

The doors of the rooms next to Connor's, occupied by the kids he'd taken under his wing, were already wide open and abandoned. Blood trailed on the carpet under Angel's feet and splattered in claw shapes on the already-stained walls. Connor's door was broken and unhinged, just like the mess Angel found inside. He ignored the few kids that had been brave and dumb enough to stay and fight who reached and called for his help on the floor-one with Connor's crushed cell phone by his hand-just a few minutes from bleeding to death, and rushed into the second, smaller room in the place.

Angel couldn't really remember what happened just then. He saw his son, broken and bleeding on the floor and a dark shape just slightly larger than Angel with gleaming green eyes, looming over him, talon-like fingers arched. And then, its head was on the floor, red drowning the room as Angel's sword clanged against the wall. And then…Connor was cradled in his arms, breathing in air and exhaling death rattles.

That was all Angel could remember.

/

It took Connor a while to heal—even with his extra-fast healing ability. Angel went to see him a week after the incident for the first time…officially. He had been at the hospital every day that Connor was unconscious, and stopped by his building every night after he was discharged. Connor had always been asleep, and the one time he wasn't asleep, Connor was unwilling to see Angel. Angel couldn't blame him: the first time _he'd_ been beaten so badly he didn't really want to see anyone, either. But Angel knew that wasn't nearly the whole reason.

The apartment halls were unusually quiet as he stalked through; some of the rooms that stood empty and dark should have been occupied. Several of the kids had been killed in the attack, and the silence that his footsteps hardly broke was of death, fear, and seclusion.

He knocked softly on Connor's door. A young Mexican boy—maybe 14 or so—opened it.

"_Es Connor aqui?"_ Angel asked.

The boy hesitated and glanced back in the room.

"Let him in…" Connor's voice said wearily from inside.

Angel stepped past the boy and into the room. They had cleaned up the blood of the dead kids, but not the rest of it yet. Connor sat on the edge of a broken couch, bent over a heavy book in his lap, trying to read it through one black eye and one blue eye. How he managed to turn the pages with such trembling fingers was beyond Angel. Connor nodded to the boy to leave.

"What do you want?" Connor said after a minute.

"Aren't I allowed to see my own son after his near-death experience?"

"Sure," Connor replied. "But you come see me every night, so… Dunno what the big difference is if I'm conscious or unconscious."

Angel glanced at the floor. "I guess seeing isn't enough," he said.

Connor shrugged. "I'm fine," he said. "I should be completely healed in a few days. Just enough for me to figure out what that thing was so next time I…" Connor swallowed. Angel stood silent, letting Connor be the one to break it. "I know why they have Watchers now," Connor finally said. "To teach the Slayers about the demons they face so they know who to keep out of the fight." His eyes darted to a bleached spot in the corner of the room.

"It's not your fault, Connor," Angel said.

"Sure it is," Connor replied with a snort. "They were under my command, I trained them, taught them how to be brave, told them they could fight anything with enough practice. I forgot…human strength really is a weakness. I thought it could be overcome."

Angel glanced around the room until he found a wooden chair. Then he picked it up and set it in front of Connor, sitting cautiously on it before he spoke.

"It can be overcome," Angel replied. "But it takes a lot more time and experience than kids this young could hope to have. You're doing a good thing here, Connor. There's a lot of work left to do in this city, and it can't be done without the kind of initiative you've had in taking them in. But you had to know that they wouldn't all make it. In the history of this whole planet, there has never been a captain in a war that brought all his soldiers safely home."

Connor gazed at his book while he thought. "I think I finally get it," Connor said, a hint of revelation in his tone.

"Get what?"

"Why you quit the fight. You couldn't stand leading your friends through something you knew they wouldn't survive."

Angel frowned and glanced at his hands. "That's partly it."

"What's the other part?"

"We've been over this, Connor."

"No," Connor raised his voice and looked up. "You came here trying convince me to keep up the good fight, when you yourself quit because all of _your_ friends died. Way to be a hypocrite, Dad. Not that you're good at _not_ being one."

"I quit to protect _you_, Connor," Angel said evenly, meeting Connor's eyes. "If we're both in the game, we become liable to each other. Your entire life story is proof of that. Think about it."

Connor shrugged, sniffed, and leaned back, his arms crossed. He thought about it. "And you decided to be the one to step down, as the old, cynical one?"

"Well…yeah," Angel admitted.

Connor was quiet for a minute. "I'm sorry to keep you away," he said eventually, "from all the people who needed you."

Angel shrugged. "They have you now," he replied.

"Yeah…" Connor agreed.

Angel glanced over at his son. "You're a good Champion, Connor. The people are better off with you than with me."

Silence fell again for a time. Finally, Connor straightened up and looked down at his book again, actually skimming the words this time. "I know," he said. "I just wanted to hear you admit it."

"So…" Angel said. "You weren't thinking of quitting, after what happened?"

"Not for a second. Oh, don't get me wrong, I still feel guilty as hell for the kids that got killed, but now I know more than ever that I need to do this. You may not believe this," Connor said, glancing up, "but I learn from your mistakes."

Angel swallowed and, after a minute, stood up. "Good," he said. "That's good." He turned to go.

"I didn't lie," Connor said, and Angel turned around again. "I do get it, kind of."

Connor turned back to his book. Angel nodded once and headed for the door. He paused in the doorway.

"I love you, Connor," Angel said quietly.

"Yeah," Connor muttered. "You too, I guess."

Angel swallowed and left as stoically as he could, though as he made his way back down the hall, a tear slid down his cheek.

/

Life was a little better after that. Connor healed, and he was a little less confrontational in their few interactions following. It was enough to put a slight spring in Angel's step—something that Nina announced more than once unnerved her. Later, he supposed he should have seen the gathering cloud following him, waiting to strike down the next thing that might make him too happy.

It happened one night, when Angel and Nina were making a late dinner. She had been chatting about something—probably the movie they'd just seen—and Angel had just stood up to open the microwave door.

The vision hit like a lightning bolt. He cried out and fell to the floor. He was only barely aware of Nina's sudden warm hands on him a few seconds later, frantically trying to calm him like he had always tried to calm Cordy.

He saw Connor. And blood. Connor's blood, everywhere. He saw strange people. A woman, chanting. A warrior with dark red skin. He heard clangs of metal, deafening his ears, and he heard thuds of flesh and bone. He felt each blow on his body. He saw symbols and fire-charred walls. Then he saw Connor fall…

"CONNOR!" The kitchen returned. He was on the floor, head cradled in Nina's lap, her heart pounding enough for the both of them. Angel jumped up.

"Angel, what was it?" Nina cried. "What's happening with Connor?"

"I have to go," Angel said, turning around on the spot, trying to reorient himself.

"But you don't answer visions, Angel," Nina protested, following him into the living room.

"I do when they're about my _son_."

"Isn't he the _reason_ you don't answer them, though? What if—"

"I have to go," Angel said again with a tone of finality. And he left, pausing only long enough to grab his sword from under the couch and jacket from the closet, unintentionally slamming the door behind him.

Connor was already in battle with the warrior when Angel arrived at the dark, half-burned, former office building that had been in his vision. This beast was larger than one that found Connor at his own apartment, with a hard, reddish, leather-like hide. Angel wasted no time trying to ram the sword into its head, but he only broke the blade against the steel-like skull in an ear-splitting crash of metal. Cursing under his breath, Angel tossed the hilt aside and threw himself at the beast as hard as he could, his fury giving him more power than he'd felt in a long time.

"Dad," Connor said, ducking a blow. "Someone's upstairs. I don't know what…" he delivered a punch to the warrior's neck, too distracted to finish the sentence. Angel glanced upwards and ducked a blow. If he listened over the thuds he could just a woman muttering something somewhere above them. He didn't know what she was doing, either, but it hadn't felt good in his vision.

"You go, I've got him," Angel said, landing a kick in the creature's gut. Connor hesitated. "Go!" Angel insisted, and Connor dashed off.

"You and me," Angel said, dancing out of the warrior's way. "We've got some issues to work through." He slammed his fist into the side of the beast's head. "Like the fact that you're trying to kill my son." He threw a kick into the back of its knee, sending it crashing to the floor. "That's just not a good way to start a friendship."

"You have no idea," the beast gasped. "What that boy is capable of."

"Oh, I think I do," Angel said, aiming a kick at its ear. Connor's footsteps thundered above them, trying to find the voice. What was he doing, running back and forth like that? She was right above them.

"If you did," the thing dodged and rolled over, a slight scrape of metal indicated that he had picked up a piece of broken sword, "you would know why they sent us to do this." The beast reached up, blade in hand, and shoved it through Angel's heart like it was through soft butter. Gasping, Angel fell to his knees. The warrior chuckled.

"You'll be glad that I killed you, too," it said. Then it slid the blade out of Angel's chest and turned to find Connor.

The hilt of sword lay just a few feet away. The adrenaline of rage soothed the pain in his body and Angel picked up the heavy metal handle with a clarity he had rarely felt before. Angel glared menacingly at the figure's retreating back.

Angel caught up with it at the top of the stairs. He grasped its head and thrust the blade into the side of its throat as silently as a cat. "And _you_ should be glad I killed you this quickly," Angel whispered in its shocked and dying ear. The creature's legs buckled under itself and Angel stepped aside as it fell backwards, thudding down into the darkness.

"Connor?" Angel yelled.

"Dad," Connor appeared in the dim light in front of him, out of breath. "There's something going on. I can't—"

A sudden flash of white light shot out from a door down the hallway. Connor and Angel looked at each other.

"Try together?" Connor asked with a tone that suggested exhaustion. Angel let just the edge of his mouth smile, and nodded. Together they made their way to the door, paused, and on a silent three, kicked it down flat.

"That's weird," Connor said, and they both crossed over the threshold with less caution than they should have. Something came flying out of the corner of the room and smashed into Connor's head. He fell to the ground just as two sets of eerily strong arms wrapped themselves around Angel and a third threw chains around his feet. Angel struggled with all his might, but could not break free.

A figure materialized in front of Angel, thin and hooded, holding a brass vial.

"Hm," its feminine voice said as if examining produce at the grocery store. "I wasn't expecting delivery of the source. But this will do." She held the vial up to Angel's heart, where the wound was still bleeding.

"Now, now," she said with a condescending _tsk_ as Angel tried his best to thwart her. She held the vial steady to the spot as though she anticipated each twist. "Let's not be difficult." She turned away with the vial brimming, and Angel noticed another figure stand up from Connor's head wound with a similarly full vial. Connor's heart was still beating. Angel struggled harder.

The figures added the vials of blood to a golden bowl of other ingredients and began chanting over it in some language that Angel couldn't identify. He took a breath to pull his strength together, and threw his weight into one of the captors as violently as he could. The figure struggled to regain a sufficient grip on Angel, and its arm slipped up by Angel's mouth. Angel smiled to himself and bit down with his fangs as hard as he could. The figure—by the scent, it was human, male, mid-thirties, with black hair and blue eyes, and by the taste...it was flooded with magic—screamed in pain, nearly deafening to Angel's ears. It was enough; Angel slipped out of their grasp, ducked to yank the chains off his ankles, and wheeled to face them.

They were skilled fighters—magically so. Angel could think of nothing but defeating them; the women at the bowl slipped all thoughts. That is, until the room filled with light.

The figures that Angel was fighting disappeared. Angel turned, and the women disappeared, too, as though they were frighteningly eager to leave. Angel rushed over to Connor and picked him up as carefully as he could. The light in the room was gathering into Connor, and all Angel knew was that they had to get out of there. He swung out of the room. The light followed and grew in strength inside Connor. The hallway was completely lit up. Obscene graffiti flashed on the office-white walls. They were at the stairs; Angel had to squint on the way down because the light was so bright. His shoes slid in the blood of the dead demon, dripping like a creek down the stairs from where the body had gotten stuck halfway down.

When Angel's foot hit the last step, the light disappeared. When Angel's foot hit the ground, it burst out of Connor and into Angel. Angel flew backwards into the stairs and Connor fell to the ground, and blackness overcame Angel.


	12. Chapter 12

**Chapter Twelve**

_This time, it took several months for Connor to heal. While he was in the hospital, I went back to the building to try to find clues about what that spell was and researched the symbols I saw in my vision. I never found anything conclusive, but what I did find wasn't good. _

_I kept constant tabs on Connor. After he was released from the hospital, I watched him get back into shape, slowly start fighting again. But it was all…wrong. He bruised his hands if he hit too hard, which wasn't nearly as hard as he used to hit. He'd lose his balance, he forgot how to flip, he'd pull muscles…_

_One night, after Connor had been out of the hospital for a few weeks, he came to me, limping. He had tried to jump off a two-story building into a filled dumpster and broken his foot. He asked me to help him figure out what was wrong. I didn't know what else to do, so I took him to the only two places I knew to find a direct link with the Powers That Be. The conduit wouldn't let either of us in, since we were coming under "old titles," but the Oracles did. Oracle, actually. Only one wanted to take the place of the siblings…_

Connor and Angel stepped through the blinding white light and waited a few seconds for their eyes to adjust.

"What have you brought me?" the oracle demanded.

Angel cursed silently—he'd forgotten about that.

"This," Connor said, pulling a long dagger out from his boot. He turned it around and offered it respectfully handle-first to the blue and gold being with a surreptitious glare in Angel's direction.

The oracle took the blade and inspected it. "It has served you well," he observed. "Service to others is the highest form of giving. I accept." The oracle gave a slight bow, and the dagger shimmered out of sight. "I know what information you have come for," the oracle said. "And I wish that you keep the Earth-adage about the messenger in mind during our conversation."

Angel frowned; a heavy, ominous cloud formed around them.

"Why?" Connor asked. "What are you going to tell us?"

"Only what you ask," the oracle replied. "Nothing more and likely less."

"What happened to Connor?" Angel asked.

"Many things," the oracle replied. "You will need to be more specific."

Angel rolled his eyes in frustration while Connor asked, "What's wrong with me? Why can't I fight like I used to? Why do I get hurt so fast?"

"Your powers of strength and healing are gone," the oracle replied. "They have been returned to the source you inherited them from."

Connor and Angel glanced at each other in shock. Then anger began boiling at a depth that Angel didn't even know existed.

"Why?" Angel demanded.

"The Powers That Be do not need two Champions for Evil in this city. When their Champion for Good failed to kill the boy, the Powers That Be decided to decommission him instead. You are fortunate," the oracle turned to Connor. "Now you may still live a normal life, if you choose."

"Wait, what 'Champion of Evil?'" Angel asked, not bothering to keep the threatening tone in check.

"Yeah, are the Powers blind?" Connor said, and Angel could feel the heat of his fury. "I've been working nonstop for the good side for months!"

"The Powers That Be see more than you do. They looked into your future and saw what you will become."

"Connor is _not_ a force of evil," Angel seethed.

"Not yet," the oracle agreed.

"But you didn't even give me a chance!" Connor yelled. "You could have warned me or someth—"

"Easier than changing destinies is taking them away," the oracle replied. "The force of evil that would have taken hold over you would have let you go when it was defeated. But you would have done far more damage than was necessary and lived in too much guilt to be of much use to us for many years after. It is better this way. One does not have to be a Champion of the Body to be a Champion of the Heart. There are other ways to be a force of good. Hold on, I think I have a _Changing Your Career Track_ pamphlet here somewhere…"

With a snarl of fury, Angel lunged forward, grabbed the oracle's neck and pushed him against the marble wall, its head slamming against it with a sickening _crack_. "Tell me how to reverse it," Angel growled through sharp teeth.

"It cannot be done," the oracle gasped, and Angel tightened his hold on the blue neck. "Do you think the Powers have not foreseen this also? It is finished. Only the boy's strength and healing powers are taken. The rest was left intact."

"It's _not_ done," Angel said.

The oracle grasped desperately at Angel's cold fingers and said in between ragged breaths, "Killing me will not help."

"No," Angel said, "but it'll make me feel a little better." He gripped the oracle's head, snapped its neck, and threw the body to the ground at his feet, the dead bones cracking against the marble floor.

/

The apartment rang in heavy silence. Judith sat with folded hands and a bowed head as though in deep prayer. Cordelia's gaze was somewhere not in this world, though her eyes looked at the floor. Her arms were crossed protectively in front of her; Angel stood several feet away, hands still slowly dripping blood.

"Their betrayal was absolute," he said finally. "Not only did they take away everything Connor had…they used me to do it." He swallowed. "They made me think Connor was in danger…made me think they were helping us, at last. But it was just to get me to go there and bleed willingly so their spell would work." He paused again. "The people in that building were all Champions of Good. Every one of us."

Cordelia shifted on the couch and rubbed her face in her hands.

"It might have just been me," Angel continued, "but ever since then I've felt just a little bit stronger… And I think I heal just a little faster." He flexed one hand in front of him, noting that the shallowest cuts were nearly gone. He might have to reopen a few if they had healed over glass. "After that I turned completely against the Powers That Be for good, and vowed that Connor was the only one I would ever live, work, or die for, ever."

Cordelia took in a long breath, but he did not look at her.

"The Powers tried to prove me wrong. After several years they sent me visions of the people who needed the most help, made me feel the pain as they were tortured, killed, and raped. But there's no way I could have…it didn't compare to the kind of pain they already put me through; the pain they put Connor through. He went down a dark path for a long time… And then he started aging, like a mortal. A few decades ago his memories started going away. It's almost a good thing, actually. He's happy again. Or maybe…for the first time."

Silence fell again, except for a stifled sniff from Judith. Angel stared at her for a moment.

"Is your answer still the same?" he asked after a minute. She looked up and her mouth twitched. "Would you still have chosen Evie?"

She took a deep, shaky breath and stared at him, her expression incomprehensible. "I don't know," she replied. Angel nodded.

"But…" she continued. "I understand. And I am no longer angry with you."

Angel didn't reply—he wasn't sure he could—but he gave a nod of grateful acknowledgement.

"And now you owe me an answer to my other question," Judith said slowly. She stood up to face him at eye level. "Is Connor's need right now more important than William's? Is your choice still the same?"

Angel did not answer right away. He glanced over at Cordelia, who had yet to stir from her thoughts. Feeling his eyes on her, Cordy looked up.

"Why couldn't you have told us?" she asked quietly, trying to speak through a swollen throat.

"I should have…" Angel said, realizing only now how true it was. "I've never told anyone before. But you're right."

"Duh," she said. "A whole lot of crap could have been avoided."

"Oh, but we're so good at avoiding things," Angel replied.

Cordy stared at him. "Point taken," she said. "But no more avoiding, Angel." She stood up, swallowing back the unshed tears. "Judith is right: We need to get time-jumping here, and you're out of time on your decision. So are you coming with…?" She crossed her arms. "Or not?"

/

The short walk back to Denver's store with 1950's Angel was nothing short of awkward.

Angel was unusually silent; not in his normal pensive way, but in a closed-off, mad-at-the-world kind of way. And that did not lead to many interesting discussion topics—or any discussion topics at all. The boys, instead, tried to focus on the relief of being out of the hotel and out from under the paranoia demon's influences; but the fact of the matter was that they still didn't know how to get home, and though helping Angel kill the hotel's resident monster was satisfying, it hardly helped their cause.

"So…" Calder eventually said as they drew nearer to Denver's shop, evidently unable to stand the silence any longer. "Who helps you fight demons these days?"

Angel glanced at him in confusion.

"You know…" Calder said. "Who patrols the streets with you? Who are your friends?"

Angel looked forward again. "I don't have any friends."

"You made friends with that lady…" William pointed out.

Angel thought for a moment. "Judy? I guess so… I don't know how that happened…"

They arrived at Denver's door and Angel went straight in, but something occurred to William and he held Calder back, pulling him away from the door.

"What?" Calder asked, slightly irritated at the sudden change in direction.

"I think," William said slowly, working through a slew of new thoughts that had just occurred to him, "that we need to start being a lot more careful about what we say to him."

"Why?"

William swallowed. "Because I think… I think this is the beginning for him. The beginning of his path to redemption. No, listen," he said as Calder tried to interrupt. "He once told us it took a while for him to accept his position after he got his soul: I don't think the idea of being a Champion has occurred to him yet. This is where it all starts. With this paranoia demon. With Judy. She's the one who starts to break the shell around him. We need to mess with this as little as poss—"

"Coward of the night!"

William and Calder jumped as Denver ran out onto the sidewalk several yards down, yelling at seemingly no one.

"And tell your buddies: I am thinking very seriously about putting my bedroll down right here!"

William and Calder glanced curiously at each other.

"You bastards just can't walk in here uninvited! You got _any idea who you're dealing with?!_"

Angel suddenly grabbed Denver by the neck from behind, vampire-face fully out. William and Calder leaped to attention and hurried over as Angel spoke harshly in Denver's ear,

"You got a reputation, that's why I'm here. Now it's been a long time since I opened a vein but I'll do it, you pull any more of that Van Helsing Jr. crap with me. Are we clear? I want the books in the back." And he shoved Denver roughly back into his store.

"Angel?" William asked cautiously.

Angel looked at him. "I'm good."

The boys glanced at each other and followed Angel in…just in case.

/

William and Calder stood off to the side together near the psychology section of the bookshop, watching Angel out of the corners of their eyes while trying to stay focused on the conversation between them.

"I want to help, too, Cal, but I'm just saying… The more I think about it, the more I'm afraid we're seriously messing with Angel's timeline!"

"You were the one so set on getting him to help us," Calder replied incredulously.

"Him helping us is different than us helping him. This is really important, Cal! This is Angel's _first time_ helping humans since he was a human himself. He might _have_ to do this on his own."

Calder sighed resignedly and looked back over at Angel, who was still talking with Denver. "We can't know, Will. We can't know anything anymore. I say: we make sure that paranoia demon—"

"Thessulac," William corrected, now that they knew its proper species.

"Whatever. I say we make sure it's good and dead before we go. This thing has to end here in 1952. We know that much, from what Angel's told us. Everything else…we can't worry about it."

William nodded thoughtfully, his brow furrowed in the same way his mother's did when she was worried. "I guess," he conceded slowly. Having no other reply for the moment, he turned his attention back to Angel and Denver.

"A vampire wanting to slay a demon in order to help some grubby humans?" Denver was saying. He shook his head. "I just don't get it."

"To be honest? I'm not sure I do, either." Angel grabbed a paper bag off of the book cart and glanced at the boys with a slight nod. He swiftly left, Calder and William following closely behind.

They had hardly passed the next store front when Angel stopped walking so suddenly that the boys nearly ran into him.

"What?" Calder asked, but Angel did not reply. He stood tense, as if waiting for something. Seconds later, the earth rumbled, and all three of them braced themselves for the quake. The ground slid under them just long enough to throw them somewhat off balance before it stopped again.

"I thought earthquakes lasted longer than this," William said uneasily after a moment.

Angel gripped the axe handle in his hand. "These aren't normal earthquakes," he said quietly, and then started walking again. The boys followed.

"What do you mean?" William asked. "What are normal earthquakes like?"

"They're bigger. Look at the people around us."

William and Calder looked at the other pedestrians near them. They seemed nervous and harried, as if also waiting for another aftershock, and trying to get to their destination before it hit. The cars that had pulled over were just starting to cautiously move again.

"Now look down there," Angel said as they came up to a crosswalk and stopped.

Again, William and Calder looked. Just one street down, it looked like nothing had ever happened. Traffic was moving along at its normal pace and people were walking and chatting with relaxed, oblivious ease.

"They didn't feel it…" Calder said slowly.

Angel bent down to open a sewer cover.

"Why didn't they feel it?" Calder asked, bending over the hole that Angel was quickly disappearing through.

"I don't know," Angel said, his voice echoing. He waited until both boys had also descended into the sewer and the cover was securely in place again. "But I'm going to take a guess and say it has something to do with you two."

The boys glanced at each other nervously as they followed Angel, who was quickly moving off again.

"How?" William asked, but Angel only shrugged.

Silence fell for a few moments, though they could still hear the roaring cars driving on the road above them. William thought he would have to get his hearing checked when he got back home. If he got back home.

"So…" Calder said eventually. "Why take the sewers? It's nighttime."

"Easier to get in unnoticed. The axe kind of draws attention."

"We should have gotten more axes," William realized too late. "These daggers won't be much help…"

"Why?" Calder said. "It's not like that's what gets it in th—"

"Cal," William hissed, jabbing him in the ribs.

Angel gave them a sideways glance. "What do you mean?"

"Nothing," William replied quickly. "Just that we're going to help you kill this thing."

Angel raised his eyebrows with much skepticism. "_You're_ going to help me kill it?"

"What?" Calder said defensively. "We've killed demons before."

"Mm," Angel said. "Right. How old are you kids?"

"16," Calder replied.

Angel snorted. "16," he said, shaking his head. "Who would teach 16-year-olds how to fight?"

"_You_," the boys said together.

Angel raised his eyebrows at them. Finally he sighed and said, "Sure." Then he looked forward and mumbled, "I'd appreciate the help."

William and Calder looked at each other and smiled.

/

"Okay, now we hold hands," Cordy said, and stretched out her hands to be taken. "Close our eyes," Cordy closed hers in demonstration, "and theoretically I should be able to somehow pull us back to a very specific time and place in Earth history."

"Didn't they tell you how to do it when they gave you the power?" Judith asked, tentatively taking one of Cordelia's hands.

"Kind of," she said. "The Powers give a lot of instructions via instinct, so I'm just going with my gut." Cordy cracked an eye open. "Hand, Angel?"

"Right," he said, and extended his hand hesitantly, now clean and glass-free, but stopped. "You know, maybe you should practice first. Just go back five minutes or something."

"I've got this, Angel, don't worry." She motioned her fingers impatiently, and Angel took them.

"Okay," Cordy said, relaxing her shoulders and closing her eyes again. "Eyes closed, think Hyperion 1952, and…hold on tight."


End file.
